Competing priorities - pay off debt vs. home improvement

[Revelate]

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@jetsfan2013 wrote:

The only store cards I have would be IKEA (opened 4/2018), Dell (opened 4/2018) Firestone (opened 8/2019) and Home Depot (opened 2/2020). If I remove those, I cut my revolving credit down by nearly 10k, and would be left with a NFCU Visa, an Amex Hilton Surpass, and a Barclays AA Red Aviator. More than enough for me, however would closing those store cards cause a huge hit to my FICO?

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Probably not but they do factor into revolving utilization metrics.  If you were pretty from a revolving utilization perspective sure get rid of them but that isn't where you are today.  Pay them off and leave em $0, especially since that Home Depot card might still get useful financing offers from Home Depot (I haven't kept up recently) and you're talking about fixing up the house eventually anyway.

[donkort]

In retrospect, I would say that it would not be necessary for you to close those cards----but, if you did, I don't feel it would take a big bite out of your FICO score because they are all recently-opened cards--less than two years old.

It is actually possible that your most recent card (this month) could have dropped your score a bit because of the hard inquiry and the added trade line.  In my experience, whenever I got a new card, there would be a temporary drop in score of maybe 5-10 points, then a recovery when two or three months of payments on that card are received.  

[jetsfan2013]

I know my score has taken a hit with the new mortgage just reporting and now a new credit card. I will be in the garden the remainder of the year and as mentioned digging out of the small mess I have made. The myFico simulators note that I could be in the high 700s in a matter of 10 months of aggressive revolving paydown.