topic Re: Citi New Annual Fee in Credit Cards

Citi New Annual Fee

Anonymous — Tue, 16 Mar 2010 17:04:26 GMT

I have had a Citi card since '98 in good standing and always paid off. The credit limit is 25K. I have 2 other CC's totaling 36K in limits. If I cancel the Citi card will that lower my FICO # because I will have less available credit?

Re: Citi New Annual Fee

Lel — Tue, 16 Mar 2010 17:54:14 GMT

Hi jp3011, and welcome to the FICO Forums.

The lower available credit that would result from closing your Citi card could hurt your score if the other two credit cards report consistently high balances. If this is the case, then your utilization would go up and your score could drop. If, however, your other two cards only report balances of $1000 each, for example, then losing the $25,000 CL isn't going to have a significant negative effect, since your overall utilization of available credit would still be less than 9%.

Correct me if I'm wrong, but I thought the annual fee would be waived if you spent a certain amount of money using your Citi card.

Re: Citi New Annual Fee

Anonymous — Tue, 16 Mar 2010 19:08:21 GMT

@Anonymous wrote:
I have had a Citi card since '98 in good standing and always paid off. The credit limit is 25K. I have 2 other CC's totaling 36K in limits. If I cancel the Citi card will that lower my FICO # because I will have less available credit?

Wow ... if you close Citi card you only have 11k on two cards, it's cut down to 1/3. Then you need to apply for another card(s). What kind of Citi Credit Card do you have? As Lel said, the letter from Citi said if you spend the 2.4k/yr they will wave the AF.

Re: Citi New Annual Fee

Lel — Tue, 16 Mar 2010 19:47:18 GMT

Oh, I thought that the OP has a $25,000 CL on the Citi card and $36,000 on the other two cards. But if really is losing $25,000 out of $36,000 total, then it's much more likely that utilization could become an issue.

Re: Citi New Annual Fee

Anonymous — Tue, 16 Mar 2010 21:37:48 GMT

Did I read OP's post in different way? OP ... what is the correct total CL on your three credit cards? Is it total 36k or 61k? If I did, sorry... from total of 61k, you will loose 40% of CL and it still can hurt your score later.

I have Citi Driver's Edge MC with little as 8.6k CL (this is highest CL along with my other cc) and this is 18% of my total (eight ccs) CL. I decided to keep this one open instead loosing the 18% CL and raise the util.