I currently credit score frozen, and have been trying to get it unfrozen. However I am having some trouble as its taking a few more days than I initially expected.

Has anyone else had long delays in getting your credit unfrozen?

It may take a day or 2 to freeze/unfreeze.

Wanderer wrote: One thing you can do is to place "Security Freezes" on your credit and information gather reports (Experian, Equifax, Trans Union, Innovis, Lexis Nexis, Sage Stream, etc). This will greatly improve your odds of not getting hacked. Note, it is more work to temporarily or permanently unfreeze them for credit seeking. Froze mine and found a card I wanted and unfroze one credit bureau for two days and had it automatically freeze it back up. Hoping I can sleep at night. Got the letter from Equifax telling me that 145,000,000 people were hacked and I was one of them.

I'll have to check into that. I wasn't aware that you could freeze and unfreeze at will like that. Sounds like a brilliant idea. I hope your credit stays safe! It's shame such a breach happened.

Wanderer wrote: One thing you can do is to place "Security Freezes" on your credit and information gather reports (Experian, Equifax, Trans Union, Innovis, Lexis Nexis, Sage Stream, etc). This will greatly improve your odds of not getting hacked. Note, it is more work to temporarily or permanently unfreeze them for credit seeking. Froze mine and found a card I wanted and unfroze one credit bureau for two days and had it automatically freeze it back up. Hoping I can sleep at night. Got the letter from Equifax telling me that 145,000,000 people were hacked and I was one of them.

Credit monitoring and freezing your accounts are the best way to monitor hacks. You can still easily get hacked, but those 2 tools help you monitor them.

One thing you can do is to place "Security Freezes" on your credit and information gather reports (Experian, Equifax, Trans Union, Innovis, Lexis Nexis, Sage Stream, etc). This will greatly improve your odds of not getting hacked. Note, it is more work to temporarily or permanently unfreeze them for credit seeking. Froze mine and found a card I wanted and unfroze one credit bureau for two days and had it automatically freeze it back up. Hoping I can sleep at night. Got the letter from Equifax telling me that 145,000,000 people were hacked and I was one of them.

Moneyes wrote: It has gotten to the point now where it's not a matter of if you get hacked, but when. Which makes it more dangerous to have more cards. You're giving hackers more chances to get you when you have more cards.

There's one card I've been debating about keeping open or not because of this. It was a store card, but when all but one store closed, it was revamped into a "home goods" card. In my area, it's primarily good at mattress stores which I will probably never visit.

JGibbs wrote: The more credit cards you keep open, the more you have to worry about identity theft and data hacking.

It has gotten to the point now where it's not a matter of if you get hacked, but when. Which makes it more dangerous to have more cards. You're giving hackers more chances to get you when you have more cards.

The more credit cards you keep open, the more you have to worry about identity theft and data hacking. It becomes a lot to keep up with if you're shuffling a bunch of them. I can see how it would be easier to close some out.

Wanderer wrote: This question is like playing cat and mouse. I have had cards closed by "Credit granters" due to inactivity. Some schools of thought are to put usage on every card at least once every six months. Probably works if you have needs. Where I am at, I do not have enough needs to keep 13 cards going. Truth 3 to 5 cards would be almost too much. I did take the score hits over time and off loaded the small credit line bottom feeder cards. Now I cull the herd by keeping cards that yield the highest rewards that fits my life style. My one long time vulnerability is what happens after ten years? Tried to back fill with enough cards to keep my credit file thick and solid. So far, I have been supporting scores in the FICO 826 area (300 to 850). Did hit 848 April 2014 but lost it by opening a new account. It sure takes patience!

Agreed it definitely takes patience. Its very easy and quick to drop your credit score, but slow to increase it.

This question is like playing cat and mouse. I have had cards closed by "Credit granters" due to inactivity. Some schools of thought are to put usage on every card at least once every six months. Probably works if you have needs. Where I am at, I do not have enough needs to keep 13 cards going. Truth 3 to 5 cards would be almost too much. I did take the score hits over time and off loaded the small credit line bottom feeder cards. Now I cull the herd by keeping cards that yield the highest rewards that fits my life style. My one long time vulnerability is what happens after ten years? Tried to back fill with enough cards to keep my credit file thick and solid. So far, I have been supporting scores in the FICO 826 area (300 to 850). Did hit 848 April 2014 but lost it by opening a new account. It sure takes patience!

I recently checked my credit score thanks to a budgeting website that I use. When I did it gave me information on the six factors that make up the score and provided recommendations. I currently have 17 open accounts and, according to this source that's "good," though it recommends I don't close any accounts.

Closing an account can also affect your average age of credit. My oldest current account is about 8 years old. I had a credit card before that, but I didn't know any better and closed the account when I stopped using it.

You pose a question that gets beat up on several different websites. Some hold to never close cards and try to feed them once in awhile so they stay alive. Other posters will tell you to "cull the herd" and keep your cards to a manageable level. That said, from my experience with a credit file that has been around longer than fifteen years closing cards has not really affected me (temporary drop in Fico Score but it rebounds). Now the big real concern is often when we build or rebuild our credit we start out with cards that are high aprs, high annual fees and low credit lines and often they will not really grow so we open better cards as our credit bureau reports grow. Problem then is trying to keep alive cards that really no longer have a purpose. The other problem can come when we don't use a card and the lender closes due to inactivity in the bureau it shows "closed by credit granter." So what to do, I risked closing the old small worth cards knowing since they are reporting good credit they will generally remain for ten years ... the challenge is what happens when the fall off? Our "Oldest Credit Card" and "Average Age of Account" may be affected. This is the risk. If we have a solid thick credit file with many cards with a longer life we may sail through with a minimum of effect to our Fico Scores but, if most of our active cards are more recent we could take a hit in Fico Score. Thus the game. Back in 2009 I closed probably nine or ten cards ... in 2016 I closed six cards and lost $50K+ in credit. You say why? I could not come up with a viable spend to keep all the cards alive and my lenders were nervous about the amount of available credit I had in relation to my income. US Bank did a financial review and dropped my credit with them by $10K and they were still a little edgy. This is where the balances between good Fico Scores, how many cards to have and how big a credit lines do we want. So ... if I offered a lot of info and did not give you one answer it is only because it can be very specific to our own credit files at the time we think about closing cards. Hope my long winded explanation does offer some background for you to think and consider

So, Wanderer, you think that if we have a large enough credit file that getting rid of cards that are not in use will help or hurt our credit? I'm just a bit confused about this topic. I was under the impression that one should close accounts not in use.

This brings up an interesting question. Cycling your use of, say, 3 credit cards is a good way to keep all balances at zero, thus giving you the best score you can have. Could the same method be applied to "cycling" active accounts in order to keep a good credit score or maybe raise it simply because of the cycle? Every few years close out the oldest one, then open a new one. The old one you closed will put another on the bottom, which, in time, you would also close out, open a new one........rinse and repeat.

Thanks for the information Wanderer. I'm still receiving statements for it so I know it's open. I've had a handful of cards. Some closed because the store they were attached to did, but I've closed at least two. One was the first card I got in college; the other was a joint card with an ex. Her credit was worse than mine, so that was probably a good thing. Just another reason for me to check in on my reports. Thanks again.