I final got some money together, my credit score is ready to pop, I just need to pay off all my cards. My question is, the cards that have annual, even monthly fee's, with outrageous interest rates......what should I do?? Close them?? For the first time in my life my score should be well over 700, I would like to keep it that way.
What ever you do, do NOT close any accounts. Especially if they are old accounts. If you close these accounts your score will def. take a hit.
You have to look at your total picture (if you have one or two small limit cards with a short history and the rest of your credit is long history, high limit, it might not impact too much). But what CWCR is true. Closing cards can hurt your score because it can decrease the length of history and raise your utilization ratio. If you have good score, don't need any credit for a few years and have one or two small ones out of a good number of cards, it might be worth it. As for high interest rates, pay the card off in full each month and you shouldn't have to pay interest. More and more cards are going to annual fees, so you might not get away from them. You also need to look at what you get from the card. If you get miles, use it a lot and can get a plane ticket every couple of years, then look at the fee as the cost of the ticket and you may see that the deal isn't so bad after all.
