Hope I'm In the Right Place

[Anonymous]

Quick question....My score is slowly increasing, started at 505 and now up to 660.  Seems once I reached 650 I started to get, what I call legitimated, cc offers.  Will my score suffer if I close a couple of my high interest rate CC's that have annual and all those other bad credit fees?  Right now I have two from Orchard (300), one from Credit One (650), and one from Capital One (750).  I just got approved for a WAMU CC with a credit line greater than the four previous mentioned cards combined.  The only one I would like to maybe keep is the Cap One.  I heard that having an account open for less than two years and closing it will hurt your score.

Other than the Credit cards, I only have a car loan and student loan open on my report.  What is considered too many open CC accounts?

Any help is appreciated.  I have worked too hard and long to start the rebuild process and I would hate to see my score tank just because I closed a high interest rate/fee based  credit card.

[southernficoaddict]

How old are the CC's that you want to close?  You can always just PIF and stick them in a drawer and not use them for now.  Chances are that closing them will hurt your score because you will be drastically lowering the age of your accounts.  If you leave those balances at zero, and just show a low util% (<10%) on your new "improved" card, then that will probably help your score.  Just be sure to pull the others out every couple of months and buy a lunch or something on them and PIF just to show that you are using them.  Have read a few threads lately about people getting theit CLI reduced or even their account closed for lack of use.

[Anonymous]

Closed accounts are included in age. Closed accounts continue to age as well.

There is a sticky over on the CC forum regarding closing credit cards.

[Anonymous]

Well my two with Orchard:  1 over 2yrs and the other almost 2 yrs.  Credit one is about a year and a half.  I thought about just leaving them open but I hate having to pay all those fees (i.e. membership fee, admin fee, etc.....) 

[Anonymous]

thanks sidewinder, I will check it out.

[Anonymous]

I generally recommend against closing credit cards. The exception, of course, is if they are nickel-and-diming you to death with fees, and despite significant improvement in your credit profile since acquiring the card, refuse to give you more favorable terms.

There are some cards out there that are strictly rebuilders, that can never develop into anything better, and that should be jettisoned once you get past the mid-600s or so.