Just my opinion so please take it with a grain of salt. I’ve had an AMEX card since I was a teenager (I had a job in high school and they gave me one while I was still in high school). I’ve had it all these years.
I agree with some of the other posts. I wouldn’t worry in the least about this. Your score won’t go down much at all.
One of my clients works at FICO and he told me a while back it’s this formula for your FICO score:
35% Payment History
30% Debt Usage
15% Credit Age (Average age of all your credit accounts)
10% Credit Inquires
10% Account Mix
Also, something important to note with American Express is they will allow you to get a new card and KEEP your “member since” date. So even if you downgrade to the Blue card, request that they change your member since date to when you got your Gold card and they will do it! And it should reflect as such on your FICO report.
For example, I started out as a teenager as a Green card member. Then in college I upgraded to Gold then when I graduated from college I got the Platinum. A few years ago I got the SPG AMEX card they sent out a new card and it had member since 2011 and it reflected as such on my credit report. Then I asked them to change it to match my other cards. They did and immediately fed ex’ed me out a new card a few days later. The next FICO report the following month it was already reflecting back to the original member since date. They don’t automatically do that when you downgrade cards but they WILL do that if you request. (I learned this trick many years ago from an AMEX executive client of mine).
So I’d recommend that you call AMEX and cancel your gold card. They will try to get you to keep it. That’s when you can tell them you’d be willing to downgrade to the Blue card but request they keep your “member since” date as when you first got the gold card.
I’ve ALWAYS done that for the various AMEX cards that I have and they have done it and it reflects as such on my credit report. Keep in mind if you have additional members they will NOT backdate their member since dates. Just yours as the primary card owner.
Even if you didn’t do this as you can see above from the breakdown on the FICO score, you wouldn’t lose many points at all. Realistically anything over probably 775 is probably all the same. I’m also over 800 but never really noticed anything different at all.
But if it’s that big of a concern for you, which I don’t blame you for wondering is make sure you request once you convert over to the Blue card to keep your member since date the same as Gold and it WILL reflect as such on FICO report.
