Optimising/balancing credit utilisation percentage and available credit risk

daivid

Full context below, but in short I have 6 payed off cards and there is only one I want to keep. I have no important credit applications planned for over a year, though I may try to get a new reward card in 3-4 months. Now seems a good time to do some pruning.

Plan A: ditch all 5 at once - my credit utilisation goes up to 29% and obviously 5 accounts would have been closed in one go.
Plan B: close the 4 I most want to and keep utilisation just under 25%.
Plan C: close some now and the remainder in six months (or continue to keep the 5th).

Do any of you experienced in managing multiple cards have any thoughts on which plan would be best (or if it even matters).


Context:
In have a stooze pot of just over £10k that I'd like to keep going now saving rates are starting to pick up. My stoozing is currently on two cards, both with 16 months left at 0% and with high utilisation (92 and 64%), I will also be gradually building up just under £4k on another card over the next 18months which will then have 6months left at 0%. This will mean the stooze pot rises slightly over that time.

I have 3 regular use cards - amex rewards, mastercard held for a long time, and visa in case I cannot use the other two or there is some advantage to visa, all are spent on every month and all payed in full. Typically there is < £1500 owed at any one time and have a combined limit of £20k.

I then have 6 dormant cards - old 0% now payed off in full, these in concert with the regular spending cards bring my average utilisation down to 18%.

Also of relevance my stooze pot is currently about 1/3 of my annual salary, my current total of credit limits about 2x salary , if I cut all 5 cards this would drop to about 1.5x