Close or keep open cards for credit score

Jas12345

Like many, I have a few credit cards in my portfolio with a zero balance on them after historic balance transfers to clear their debt.

From a credit score point of view would it be more beneficial to close and cancel these unused cards down or leave them available to show that you have access to funds in an emergency should you need them?

Or does it really not affect a credit score either way?

MorningcoffeeIV

From a credit score point of view, doesn't matter, as no one ever sees it and it has nothing to do wjth lending decisions.

From a credit worthiness point of view, depends on your income, debts and available credit. You want to demonstrate that you're a safe bet, but not that you could run up debt beyond your means tomorrow.

sithmaster

Depends on any other cards you have, if you have a balance on the other card(s) and cancel your unused cards you will increase your credit usage as you have reduced your available credit.
If this goes over 30% your credit score will go down if it goes over 50% it will go down further.

If you have no balance on the other cards you might see a temporary decrease in your score when you close your unused cards

Superhoopza

sithmaster said:

Depends on any other cards you have, if you have a balance on the other card(s) and cancel your unused cards you will increase your credit usage as you have reduced your available credit.
If this goes over 30% your credit score will go down if it goes over 50% it will go down further.

If you have no balance on the other cards you might see a temporary decrease in your score when you close your unused cards

But how much does changing your utilization actually effect getting further credit in the future?

WillPS

Superhoopza said:

sithmaster said:

Depends on any other cards you have, if you have a balance on the other card(s) and cancel your unused cards you will increase your credit usage as you have reduced your available credit.
If this goes over 30% your credit score will go down if it goes over 50% it will go down further.

If you have no balance on the other cards you might see a temporary decrease in your score when you close your unused cards

But how much does changing your utilization actually effect getting further credit in the future?

Impossible to answer this question with any certainty. It'll almost certainly differ wildly lender to lender and product to product.

WillPS

Jas12345 said:

Like many, I have a few credit cards in my portfolio with a zero balance on them after historic balance transfers to clear their debt.

From a credit score point of view would it be more beneficial to close and cancel these unused cards down or leave them available to show that you have access to funds in an emergency should you need them?

Or does it really not affect a credit score either way?

You might want to keep your longest open card - but other than that I would personally be closing these accounts down to make sure I was eligible for new customer/card offers in the future.

Keep your longest held account(s), keep the stuff that you actually have a use for, let the rest go.

I might take a different view if, say, my income had decreased tho.

horsewithnoname

I've had two or even 4 times my income in total credit limits - I used to open cards for BTs and then not close them. The only time I ever had an issue getting a card was just after i'd moved house. I tend to close them once I've finished with them now, but have never found it made much difference either way.

Nasqueron

I'm kinda in the same position here, I have a cleared Santander BT card (limit is £2500, no offers) and a nearly cleared M&S one with a £4k limit - they give 9 month offers which are useless - I am half tempted to keep the M&S one purely for shopping at M&S but I doubt I'll use it otherwise. My oldest is £6k limit (accepted an increase to £7.5k) which I have used for BTs but they only offer 12 months at 5% iirc and even my main spend card from the same group offers 15 months (not that I mix them!). I think as the Santander is the same type as the others I might as well get rid of it as my overall utilisation is still sub 35% and I have a long history of never missing payments and good use of credit