Close Credit Card Accounts Without Lowering Your Credit Score

Most people are aware that closing credit card accounts will lower their FICO credit score.  The reason closing accounts can lower the score is because it reduces the amount of available credit you have - and if you have any balances on any of your accounts - reducing your available credit will increase your debt utilization.

If you want to close some of your credit card accounts without affecting your FICO score is to pay off your credit card accounts (or reduce your balances as low as possible), make sure the accounts are reported to the credit reporting bureaus as paid off or with low balances, and then begin closing credit card accounts.  If you have no debt or very little debt, you aren’t going to be increasing your debt utilization percentage as much when you close the accounts, so your credit score will barely be affected by closing the accounts.

It is not wise to close numerous accounts all at once, under any circumstances, though.  Close one or two at a time and wait until you see the affect it has on your credit score (if any) before closing additional accounts.  Most of the time, having unused, open credit isn’t lowering your credit score and it doesn’t hurt you to keep the account open.