A shorter average account age can hurt your score.
Not exact matches
Not only does closing the card do nothing to remove either the inquiry or new
account that left your score lower, closing it won't prevent the card's very
short credit history from unfavorably impacting the scoring calculations —
average account age, oldest and newest
account age, for example — that make up the length of credit history scoring category (about 15 percent of your score).
Drawbacks of More Credit Cards: While it's true that in the long term opening up a new credit card can help you to build credit, in the
short term it will decrease your
average account age, a factor used when calculating your credit score — with older being better in the eyes of card issuers.
This means that you want to keep your oldest credit cards, since they help lengthen your
average age of
accounts and counterbalance the negative effect of closing cards you've only had a
short time.