First I want to thank Fern for looking out for me on this topic. I decided to reply to her comment in another post because I think this is SUCH an interesting topic!

I must say that I was completely wrong in not giving all the facts surrounding the closure of those cards.

All of the cards that I closed yesterday were all 3 years old or less.
I closed mainly store cards and tranferred the available credit of one of the major credit cards to another card with the same company prior to closing. All of my older cards remain open. I periodically use them for cash & then pay them off so to keep the accounts active.

I should also state that I work in a financial industry and I completely familiar of the workings of FICO and all three of the credit bureau agencies. I definately understand the impact of closing cards on my credit rating.

I still have several major credit cards, all that are much, much older than the cards that I closed. My score 3 years ago (before I got those cards) was extremely high and it didn't change after I got the cards. I feel confident that it won't change much now, just because of closing them.

As for the utilization ratio: this ratio absolutely plays a HUGE part in your credit score. However, having no credit card debt, the utilization rate that I currently have won't change for me.

Basically, it works like this: If I have $0.00 in debt compared to $35,000 in credit lines on my bureau, it gives me a 0% utilitation or 100% available credit. If I have 0.00 in debt compared to $22,000 in credit lines (which is what I have now), its still 0% utilization and 100% available credit.

Banks and all 3 credit bureaus (Experian, Equifax and TransUnion) look at things in terms of straight numbers. 0% utilization is still 0% utilization no matter what.

That being said, if I had any credit card debt, any at all, I would not have closed the accounts until it was paid off, because the closures would definately have negatively affected my score. I was absolutely remiss in not stating that before.

So thanks again Fern for pointing that out. You were absolutely right in saying it would be almost a punishment to my score to close those accounts with credit card debt.

And because I think this is a REALLY great topic, I plan on checking up on my credit score at the end of March. That will be over 30 days from the closure, giving the card companies enough time to update with the credit bureas. I'll post at that time with the resultss.

I'm betting there won't be a noticible difference. In August 2006, my score was 785 from Experian(see my Aug 06 post). October 2007 (the last time I checked), my credit score was 780 from TransUnion. I account for the difference as being due to using two different Credit Bureaus. Each has slightly different information, which is not unusual.

I will check back with my March 2008 with my Experian score. We'll see how it goes. And one more thing...other than the card closures, there has been no change to my credit bureau since I bought my house in 2006.

This should be fun... don't forget to check back!