To Close or Not to Close?

[panicattack]

I have seen conflicting advice when it comes to closing and keeping open credit cards.  I am asking for advice here.

Here's my situation:

When I was starting out, got some pidly credit cards to start some positive tradelines.  Over a ten year period, I got five of these cards.  They all have small credit limits, averaging about $300, and they all have monthly service fees.  Even if I do not use the cards, I still get charged about $6.

Things have changed dramatically since those days.  On my latest app spree, I acquired 7 new cards and a total of $48,000 in credit limits.  I really don't want those old cards anymore.  They are useless to me, but I am afraid my AAoA will cause my scores to drop dramatically if I close them.

The oldest of the useless cards is ten years.  I would definately hang on to that one.  The other four were acquired between 2007 and 2009.

Should I just suck it up until my new "real" credit cards age a bit more or should I start canceling the useless ones?  I am also concerned that I have too many cards.  I only cary a small balance of 2% on one card at a time, but those useless cards show a balance every month, even though it's just six bucks, I understand that counts against me.

What to do.  What to do.  Any advice is appreciated.

[notfancy]

Closing those cards will not affect your AAOA until ten years from when you close them- which won't matter as your new cards will be ten years old by the time your closed accounts fall off. Get rid of your sharky cards. If they aren't doing anything for you but costing you money, and you've replaced them with better cards, then they have served their purposes.

They will still count in your AAOA, thus helping you, for ten more years, then they will fall off. The only thing that closing them can potential hurt is your over all utilization. If you don't have any balances currently, or they're small enough, then again, closing them won't hurt you.

To be more precise- you just picked up 48k, lets say that your other cards that you want to close total 2k giving you a nice round 50k in total available credit.

Now- lets say that you are carrying a balance over all of $10,000. This means that currently, your over all UTL is 20% which is not bad.

Next- Lets say you close that 2k in small, crummy cards, but you still have that over all balance of $10,000 outstanding. Your utilization will go UP to 21%. This is still not bad, but it is a "higher" UTL than you had before losing that 2k in sharky cards.

I hope that helps!

[panicattack]

THANK YOU!  That is just the info that I needed!  I will be closing all five of the sharky cards.

[gdale6]

If the cards are carrying an AF or MF and you no longer need the CL they provide for utilization then by all means close them, they have done their job.