...hurt your credit score?

It is my understanding that cancelling store credit cards does NOT hurt your score. In fact, it can help, because it can eliminate the amount of open credit that you have.However, I suppose at the extremes, it could hurt. For instance, if you have only one credit card, and you cancel it, then you may lose your ability to prove that you are a good credit risk, until you get another credit card.But if you have open credit cards with stores that you rarely use, I'd recommend cancelling them.

It may actually hurt you FICO score.One part of the score is the amount of credit used versus the amount of credit available. So, let's take a look at an example:$200 total credit available$175 total credit used Ratio of 0.875 (high)$5000 total credit available$1000 total credit used Ration of 0.2 (relatively low)The bottom ration of 0.2 is more ideal. Credit companies have found that the higher the ratio a person has (they get credit and max it out), the less likely they will pay it off.Of course some store credit cards do not report to the credit bureaua unless you go to collections. So it doesn’t matter what you do with them as long as you don’t stop paying them.It’s best to just hold on to them. You might even consider having the credit limit taken up (but don’t max them out). It’s not how much of a limit you have that’s important to the credit companies, it how much of it you’re using.Also you may want to consider the fact that although your credit score may not be affected very much if you cancel your card, if the store reports to the credit bureau, other companies will see that you canceled a card. To other companies, this means if they give you credit, you’re likely to just cancel it. Meaning you may be more of a hassle than you’re worth.Hope this helps.

www.mtg-net.com (http://www.mtg-net.com/sfaq/faq/fico.htmhttp://www.myfico.com/)

it helps because institutions can see how much you make and how much credit you currently have, and how much you currently owe. they can figure out if you can still get another credit card or not. if you cancelled one, then of course you can get another one, because one was just cancelled, so you move up in credit rating during that time. they look at you like prime meat