Sorry if this has already been asked - I've read about keeping cards open and using them occasionally to buy small things to improve average credit card age but I didn't find anything specifically about if you have no credit history.
I'm finishing up my first year in college and I have no previous credit history so I thought I'd apply for a credit card to make small purchases with and build some credit.
I applied for the Amazon Visa through Chase since I shop there a lot. After applying, I thought they would probably deny me since I don't have credit history and don't have a huge amount of income as a student. I probably should have thought it through first, but I also applied for the Discover It Student card thinking I'd have a better chance with that.
I ended up being approved for both, and now I really don't need the Discover card. I haven't used either of the cards yet, so would there be any harm in closing the Discover one? I've previously read that keeping an account open can be helpful to improve your average account age but does that still apply if the Chase one is the same age and I'm new to credit history? I have no idea if I can set up automatic payments for Discover and I don't really want to have to worry about fraudulent transactions.
Thanks in advance!
EDIT: I also forgot to mention I didn't really know about hard/soft inquiries until after I applied, so I have two hard inquiries now. Would that be super detrimental? Would it kept to ask a parent to put my name on one of their older credit cards to build some credit too?
Submitted April 28, 2017 at 05:43AM by fifteensunflowers http://ift.tt/2qlQokX
