Hi, welcome to the forums! If you were starting from scratch, I'd suggest 3 bank cards (=Visa, MC, Discover, AmEx) with at least one of them from a credit union, and one purely retail (store or gas) card, one without a Visa, MC etc logo.
Since you already have cards, don't go closing them. There's a flag on FICO reports when you hit 30 or more accounts, open and closed, but there doesn't seem to be much of a score ding. If you have some truly dreadful cards, with annual and monthly fees, fees for breathing in, and fees for breathing out, that's different. But first, read fused's "Closing Credit Cards" --it's linked in my siggy.
And if you haven't already, please read
Understanding Your FICO ® Score and
Credit Scoring 101 (at least the first post.)
These will give you the background knowledge you need to understand what you read here on the forums.
eta: the best thing that you can do is get your balances down. Right now, if you closed cards, you'd hurt your scores. Ideally, only one of your cards would report a balance, and that would be something small, like $20. You'd pay the others off before their statements posted, so that they would report $0 to the credit bureaus. Use them, but be aware of what is being reported and how it affects your util. (Since most cards report the amount on the statement, not the balance after you've paid, it can look like you're carrying balances even if you're not.)
Message Edited by haulingthescoreup on 05-13-2009 04:18 PM
* Credit is a wonderful servant, but a terrible master. * Who's the boss --you or your credit?
FICO's: EQ 781 - TU 793 - EX 779 (from PSECU) - Done credit hunting; having fun with credit gardening. - EQ 590 on 5/14/2007
