I would close 1 a month or so until I only had the cards that have remaining balances on them. It may affect your fico for a bit but if you need to borrow a substantial sum later, (for a mortgage or similar) having that many cards and available credit open may work against you.
Closing accounts may drop your FICO in the short term, but eventually they come back up. And yes, identity thief can be a big mess. I went through something similar that a collection agency got my name mixed up with someone else, had to spent a couple thousand in lawyer's fees (and that is a steeply discounted rate from a friend) to get things sorted out.
I have read blogs and pages on the credit card thing because we had a bunch too. If you call your bigger banks like CITI and ask they will combine a couple cards into one. That doesn't hurt your score I had two accounts with CITI and My husband had 2 now we have one apiece and they combined limit also . Now that did not hurt us.
But we closed a few small cards like Lane Bryant, King Size and a few like those that in many cases we never used in one day and it really hurt our score.
It took it about a year to recover.
At one time we had over 200,000 credit limit but we have it down to about a 100,000 now or a little below that because one credit card company almost closed one of our account. They lowered our limit to 5.00 from 12,500.00 and the other card was lowered from 12,500.00 down to 6500.00 Neither of these cards we owe on.
A couple of mine also lowered my limit or sent me an opt out letter but I really didn't care since I was taking my name off of everything at the time.
I read one time that your credit limit should not be more then three times your yearly income. And the cards should not be used more then 30% of it limit. That is according to Carmen
I would close 1 a month or so until I only had the cards that have remaining balances on them. It may affect your fico for a bit but if you need to borrow a substantial sum later, (for a mortgage or similar) having that many cards and available credit open may work against you.
JMPO
Sharon
I agree with Sharon.
Closing accounts may drop your FICO in the short term, but eventually they come back up. And yes, identity thief can be a big mess. I went through something similar that a collection agency got my name mixed up with someone else, had to spent a couple thousand in lawyer's fees (and that is a steeply discounted rate from a friend) to get things sorted out.
I have read blogs and pages on the credit card thing because we had a bunch too. If you call your bigger banks like CITI and ask they will combine a couple cards into one. That doesn't hurt your score I had two accounts with CITI and My husband had 2 now we have one apiece and they combined limit also . Now that did not hurt us.
But we closed a few small cards like Lane Bryant, King Size and a few like those that in many cases we never used in one day and it really hurt our score.
It took it about a year to recover.
At one time we had over 200,000 credit limit but we have it down to about a 100,000 now or a little below that because one credit card company almost closed one of our account. They lowered our limit to 5.00 from 12,500.00 and the other card was lowered from 12,500.00 down to 6500.00 Neither of these cards we owe on.
A couple of mine also lowered my limit or sent me an opt out letter but I really didn't care since I was taking my name off of everything at the time.
I read one time that your credit limit should not be more then three times your yearly income. And the cards should not be used more then 30% of it limit. That is according to Carmen
Hi!
Thanks for the info. Right now our credit limit is way above what we owe. Our credit rating is in the excellent range.