Use the card more — but only if you can afford to.
Managing a financial crisis is about prioritizing. If your financial world has been thrown into chaos by the COVID-19 pandemic, you should not be spending extra money just to keep a little-used credit card open. Use every penny to keep the lights on and food on the table, and make at least the minimum payments on all the loans you haven’t been able to defer. The last thing you need to do is spend more money than is absolutely necessary.
However, if you can spare the expense for a recurring subscription, such as Spotify or Netflix, consider switching those payments to a card that you don’t use very much. Those $10 to $20 monthly payments keep your card active, while also being predictable and not adding new costs to your budget. You can then set up automatic payments, so the whole process is completely out of your hands.
There’s no guarantee that keeping a card active will save it from the chopping block. However, banks make more money off of cards that are being actively used — via fees and interest — than ones sitting dormant. If a card is generating revenue for a bank, they may be less likely to reduce that card’s buying power. Thus, if you can afford to use the card occasionally, it may make sense to do so.