I took the plunge here at How I Save Money and decided to close my American Express Blue Cash card. I still have one Amex card that I will leave open because of the credit limit and the age of the account.
The card I closed has had its credit limit reduced by Amex repeatedly (while the other card stayed with a good limit). I do not use the card and they would not increase the limit, citing high utilization as the reason for denial. Well it seems to me that reducing my available credit every few months would increase the utilization each time…but as Carlos Mencia says ‘Dee Dee Dee’.
I know that closing this card will make my credit score go down a little bit but this is just for a short time so I am not worried. My credit score has been steadily climbing and is at a level I am comfortable with. I do not have any plans to incur new credit any time soon so now I have one less card on my open report.
I don’t really need to have two cards from Amex especially since I do not even use Amex anywhere. I am just keeping the other one open because of the credit history and the available limit on the card.
I recently signed up for an american express blue cash and a chase freedom card. i use the chase card all the time but have stopped using the american express card after realizing i don’t really need it. I want to close it but i’m also worried about my credit score.
@ H E C:
Yes your credit score will drop a few points when you close the card but if you are not in the market for more credit soon then I would not worry about it too much.
Since the amex is one of the cards you recently opened it will not have a big effect on your credit score as if it were one of your older cards.
Another thing to note is the available credit on the card. If you have a limit of $5000 then closing the card will bring your available credit down by a lot…but if it only has about $700 I would go for it. I closed mine because they brought the limit down to $500 and that was doing me no good at all.
If anything, always try to keep at least one credit card open. I use a secured credit card so there’s no way they can reduce my limit any lower than the balance I have in the secured savings account.
Hmm I’ve never had any problem with my Amex. The credit limits have been steadily increasing each year. I was unaware that by closing a cc you dropped your credit score, thanks for the heads up.
@ Mark:
Dude, do you know how many cards I have open? 🙂 🙂 By closing that Amex, I now only have ONE Amex open. I have two Chase cards, Discover etc. etc. 🙂
@ Save Money:
I have never had a problem with the other Amex I have because the limit on it kept increasing too. It was just this one particular card….so I sacked it.
Congrats, another card bites the dust! I have three cards paid off and only one more left before I will be credit card free forever 🙂
Now that I think about it, I need to call these three cards and close those accounts.
Credit cards are a must for me, but the debts have been really high and costly. It’s best to pay them off ASAP