With the average American having eight credit cards in their wallets at a time, you might think it’s OK to have stacks of plastic. Also, you’ll always hear people saying that canceling unused cards will lower your FICO, but they’re not giving the full story. Thirty percent of your FICO is calculated using a ratio of your total statement balances divided by all your credit limits. If too high (you’re near maxed-out on all cards), your FICO drops because you’re at risk of going bankrupt. Still more, having an excess of unused credit cards lowers your FICO, too. The happy medium is to have sufficient credit limit to have a statement you can pay off in total every month that gives you a good ratio of “≤30%”:http://credit.about.com/b/a/000019.htm. These four articles give the skinny on “what to watch out for”:http://www.fool.com/investing/small-cap/2004/08/30/beware-of-canceling-credit-cards.aspx, “good reasons to cancel”:http://www.fool.com/personal-finance/credit/2004/05/18/dump-your-duds.aspx, “how to cancel”:http://www.bankrate.com/brm/news/cc/20020102a.asp, and “getting that FICO up”:http://biz.yahoo.com/pfg/e35score/art021.html.
Check out “other ways”:http://duenos.net/category/money/ to save money –a topic I am madly in love with.