Oh, I love playing with other people's credit! Thanks for posting this! 
OK, you currently have a total credit limit of $37,100. (I'm doing this in my head, so someone please holler if I go wrong.) If you close the two Orchard cards (total $900), that will reduce your total CL to $36,200. If you also close the two Cap One's, that will further reduce your total CL to $34,900.
There are several reasons to close cards, all of which can be perfectly legitimate according to your individual circumstances: they have fees, they will never grow with you, their low CL's make you look bad for future app'ing, you have problems controlling spending (being very general here), it's uncomfortable to have multiple open accounts, and they simply annoy the heck out of you.
Things to consider when closing: your total CL will drop, to whatever degree, so if you carry balances, your util will go up a little or a lot, depending on how big a chunk of your total util you just lost. You will have fewer open credit card accounts and fewer open tradelines (including loans and mortgages) overall, so it can get trickier keeping half or fewer reporting. And in terms of history, the accounts are supposed to keep reporting for another 10 years after closing, so no immediate impact there, but potentially an impact in a decade.
All that being said, in your position I would dump the Orchards. Is there a fee on either or both Cap Ones? If there's a fee, I would dump them, too, either now or 6 weeks before the next fee is due. If not, I would maybe try to consolidate the $300 card into the $1000 card, but not if it cost an inq or a fee. On all of these, they were opened closely together, and your recent feeding frenzy occurred at pretty much the same time, so even in 10 years, I doubt you'll see an impact. And by the way, if your average history is 4 years, you're doing better than I: mine is 3 years, 8 months, I think.
Thanks for cheering up my morning! I have two cards that are circling the drain, but I'm delaying closing them until the last late on each is 25 months old. It's irrational, I know, but I don't want to see those @#$%^&* yellow squares on my TrueCredit reports any more! Congrats on the banzai credit improvement! It's one way of doing it.
OK, you currently have a total credit limit of $37,100. (I'm doing this in my head, so someone please holler if I go wrong.) If you close the two Orchard cards (total $900), that will reduce your total CL to $36,200. If you also close the two Cap One's, that will further reduce your total CL to $34,900.
There are several reasons to close cards, all of which can be perfectly legitimate according to your individual circumstances: they have fees, they will never grow with you, their low CL's make you look bad for future app'ing, you have problems controlling spending (being very general here), it's uncomfortable to have multiple open accounts, and they simply annoy the heck out of you.
Things to consider when closing: your total CL will drop, to whatever degree, so if you carry balances, your util will go up a little or a lot, depending on how big a chunk of your total util you just lost. You will have fewer open credit card accounts and fewer open tradelines (including loans and mortgages) overall, so it can get trickier keeping half or fewer reporting. And in terms of history, the accounts are supposed to keep reporting for another 10 years after closing, so no immediate impact there, but potentially an impact in a decade.
All that being said, in your position I would dump the Orchards. Is there a fee on either or both Cap Ones? If there's a fee, I would dump them, too, either now or 6 weeks before the next fee is due. If not, I would maybe try to consolidate the $300 card into the $1000 card, but not if it cost an inq or a fee. On all of these, they were opened closely together, and your recent feeding frenzy occurred at pretty much the same time, so even in 10 years, I doubt you'll see an impact. And by the way, if your average history is 4 years, you're doing better than I: mine is 3 years, 8 months, I think.
Thanks for cheering up my morning! I have two cards that are circling the drain, but I'm delaying closing them until the last late on each is 25 months old. It's irrational, I know, but I don't want to see those @#$%^&* yellow squares on my TrueCredit reports any more! Congrats on the banzai credit improvement! It's one way of doing it.
@jaxstraw wrote:
When I app for a card next year (boy will that be hard), I don't need 11 cards. I'd rather have 6-7 good ones with high CL's.
Or should I do this, take the hit of $2200. and app for the NFCU to bring my total credit limit up again although it's a another app ?? I should receive a high CL according to all the info posted here.
Thanks
Jax
Ah, the moth is fluttering back toward the candle flame!
Your total CL doesn't matter if you only allow minimal balances to post, which I think is what you do. If you dump all four cards, you still will have a total CL at 94% of where it is now, so I don't think you're going to have an impact.
In the grand scheme of things, it would probably be fine to get NFCU now. My worry would be that PenFed might wonder what you're up to, since you'd probably get another good-sized CL from Navy.
Can you stand to show 4-6 months of lots of use and prompt payments with PenFed before getting Navy? You'd * probably * be OK getting Navy now, but there's a lot that we don't know here about PenFed, and since those two cards are such a big chunk of your current credit, I'd hate to see anything go bad there. It definitely won't hurt to wait, unless you are in some sort of eligibility category that's running out of time.
And I really like concorduser's to-do list. He is one of our "non-traditional app'ers", but it has worked for him (while curling my toes up.) What he lists is the name of the game: have lots of credit available, use hardly any of it, and sock cash away to cover future surprises.
