what about credit cards?

Question

what do you do when you dont want all the credit cards you have iv had them for a while and two are not getting used because of the high interest rate they say it doesnt look good on your credit to close your account so what should i do i want to switch to a company with better rates mine wont budge.( i thaught it would be better for me to close it then them.

Answer 1

Do you have an idea what your credit score is? If you have a poor score, some companies won't be as willing to work with you. If you threaten to go to a 0% APR card, they may negotiate to keep you there. The interest rates shouldn't be a problem if you pay off your cards in full every month, but if you haven't had credit for that long, it wouldn't kill you to close the accounts. The main problems with closing accounts are (1) lowers the average age of your accounts and (2) increases the debt-to-available credit ratio. Try not to get in over your head and realize that with some of those other low-interest cards, you end up paying off the lower APR balance before the high "standard" purchase APR, so if you are't paying off in full, you're paying interest for those purchases.

Answer 2

Close all of your credit cards but one. It reflects in your credit report and it is a very good sign. For instance say that you have 5 credit cards with $1000 credit limit for each. Therefore you are responsible for $5000 of possible debt. But when you close 4 of them, now you are only responsible for $1000 of debt which lowers the level of risk of lending money to you.

Answer 3

I think it's okay to close accounts that you're not using. I've done that before. I wrote the company and asked that they close it. Of course, you could just cut the cards up and not use them...if they have a 0 balance and consider them "Closed," but I think it's better to close them. Besides, what if someone ever stole your identity? They would have access to those accounts, too.