Can I cancel credit cards?

Submitted by Anonymous (not verified) on Wed, 06/27/2007 - 08:11
Forums

Currently I am using five credit cards. Due to some financial crunch I am not being able to pay on time. This is as it is damaging my credit score. I want to cancel my card now. Atleast two of them. Will that further hurt my credit score? What else can I do to manage all this?

Hi Pamela,

Welcome to the community.
You know the best way to get rid of this trouble is to stop unnecessary use of the credit cards. Keep your expenditure under control.

However when it becomes difficult to manage so many cards it is better to cancel them. This however does not do any good to your credit score. Infact it hurts the score. See, while calculating your credit, FICO considers different scoring categories like the payment history, the amount owed, the length of credit history, new credits that you have taken and types of the credit cards that you use. So if you suddenly stop utilizing a certain portion of your available credit, the score drops. Say if you cancel a zero balance credit card you will lose a great amount of individual score.

Thus if you want to cancel a credit card it is advisable that you pay down all the other balances to keep the rate intact.

Wed, 06/27/2007 - 08:48 Permalink