Cancel Credit Card Accounts?

[Anonymous]

I'm this question has been asked a million times, but here it goes.

I have 11 active credit card accounts, and am tired of paying the annual fees.  5 or 6 of them I pay of the small balance each month, and the other 5 or so have medium to high balances.  Will it kill my FICO score if I just pay off the 5 that I have no balance on?  Thanks in advance.

[Anonymous]

It won't kill your scores since there's no balance and the cards report for 10 years.

However.... if you list out your cards we can show you a way to keep them as there are normally other versions w/ less perks for $0 AF.  Then you can keep some of them w/o paying the fees and continue the aging process on them as well.

[Anonymous]

You’re going to definitely take a hit because your utilization percentage will go up. Right now those zero-balance cards are helping to pad your utilization. I’d keep them open until your other cards are paid down, and then close them. If you have no plans to apply for any type of credit in the timeframe it would take to pay down your other cards, you could ignore the effect on your scores and close them but if you were to take too much of a hit it may get the attention of your lenders in a negative way. I would keep them, pay down the others, then close anything you don’t want to keep.

[Anonymous]

list what you have and balance on each of em.

if you have any balance on any card, its best to get a better card before closing a bad one.

[SouthJamaica]

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@Anonymous wrote:

I'm this question has been asked a million times, but here it goes.

I have 11 active credit card accounts, and am tired of paying the annual fees.  5 or 6 of them I pay of the small balance each month, and the other 5 or so have medium to high balances.  Will it kill my FICO score if I just pay off the 5 that I have no balance on?  Thanks in advance.

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Yes it will hurt your scores in several ways.

1. It will increase your overall utilization percentage.

2. It will increase your percentage of accounts with balances.