Citi Best Buy card

[physicist82]

I have a question about the Citi BB card if anyone has any knowledge or advice.

We first got a Best Buy card in Dec 2012, $600 limit (that's what they gave us because the tablet we bought came out to 500 something in the shopping cart and we didn't ask for more than that.) It was owned by Cap1. In Aug 2013 I bought a new lap top for school/research and the guy in the comp dept said that they were changing from Cap1 to Citi so lots of people were getting new increases if they asked for one. We figured why not since using the card would give us 0% for 18mon. Come to find out when we get our info in the mail that it was a 2nd card, not an increase on the first. So now we had 2 BB cards. $600 and $1000. In Dec 2013 we decided to buy a Wii U at Best buy because of a better deal than at Walmart where we originally intended and we asked for a $400 increase on the $600 card. (Never thought to ask for more) So now both BB cards are $1000 limit. 

Does anyone know if we can get these limits combined onto our older card? The newer card is hurting our AAoA. The older one has a 0 balance and the new one has about $840 on it b/c 0% APR on the laptop until March 2015. Our AAoA is 4.5 years and our oldest card (not open anymore) is 14yrs. Our oldest open card is 9ish years.

The more important question is if they do allow combining limits, will they do a HP to do it? And since we are applying for a mortgage is it better to have the extra card with a 0 bal then for that card to disappear and our other one look like 40% util? 

All together we have:

0/2200 care credit (GE)

0/500 discount tire (GE)

0/500 cap1 (old HSBC)

0/1000 cap1

0/1000 best buy (Citi)

840/1000 best buy (Citi)

700/750 cap1 cash rewards

3400/3500 chase (old WAMU) we try not to keep this one too high but in March we had to replace the engine in our mini-van.

So does it look better to FICO to have the five 0 bal cards and 3 with bal or for us to get the limits combined on the BB so that we have four 0 bal cards and 3 with bal

We were going to pay the last cap1 off but we just put in a bid on a short sale house which we could get a reply from the bank on as early as a week away and we have to use the last bit of extra cash we have for the earnest money.

As a side note if anyone has any tips about the cards in general I am happy to hear them. We really want to try to combine the Cap1 lines, try to get CLI's because we haven't asked for any in a few years or at least PC them to better cap1 cards especially the HSBC one with a $59AF. I think the other 2 one has a $19AF and one has $39AF. HSBC is his oldest card so we really don't want to hurt that one if we can avoid it. We just don't want to hurt anything before the mortgage goes through. We certainly don't want to ask them for a CLI and then have them balance chase us or something. He does make about double the salary that he did when he applied for those cards though.

THanks ahead of time for any advice anyone has.

[coldnmn]

AAoA are figured in Fico scores opened and closed for ideal credit scores having one card with utilization of 1%-9% If not possible make sure you keep utilization on cards as low as possible. As utilization is figured as a total and individually.  As far as combining limits or Citi Best Buy can't help you there. Good Luck with the home.

edit: combining limits and closing the second card. The closed second card still reports on your credit report for ten years. It wont disappear.