 TITLE: Should I Cancel a Credit Card With an Annual Fee? CONTENT: How Canceling a Credit Card Affects Your Credit\n-----------------------------------------------\nClosing a credit card can immediately affect your credit scores, and may impact them again down the road.\nWhen you close your credit card, your available revolving credit will decrease and your utilization rate may increase—which could hurt your credit scores. If you have other credit cards, you may be able to offset the impact by paying down their balances or using them for fewer purchases.\nThere's also a trick if you want to keep using your credit cards but maintain a low utilization rate. If you pay down a card's balance before its statement period ends, that could decrease the balance that's reported to the credit bureaus and winds up on your credit reports.\nClosing a credit card can also impact your credit scores when the account falls off your credit reports, which will be 10 years later if your account was in good standing when you closed it. When this happens, the average age of accounts in your credit history may decrease, which could hurt your scores. END