Originally Posted by RedSun

I respect your personal experience. I agree that what counts is the credit utilization. When you close 5 accounts, definitely you reduce your total credit and everything being equal, your utilization goes up. So I do not know how you get a FICO score bump with the account closing.

The other important factors are payment history and number of accounts that have balance. I sometimes have 15 CCs that have balance (reward spending etc). I do see the complaints from CBs.

From my own experience, closing a CC with a low credit line has no or little impact to FICO score. But if I close a CC with $35,000 CL, it should result in a rise in credit utilization and drop your FICO.

What we normally recommend is that, if the CC carries AF and it does not fit your needs, then try to downgrade to no AF CC. If not possible, then just close it. Do not worry about credit score. Your AF cost is more than the few point impact (if any) on your credit. For the CCs without any AF, there is no need to close them. If you do want to close some, then do it slow. It is better to keep total credit line stable and the utilization stable.