Balance Transfer Arbitrage

There are three solid reasons why you should never cancel your card:

1. You could be offered another promotional balance transfer. If you keep the card open, the card issuer has the opportunity to try to get more business from you by offering you yet another balance transfer. I’ve had issuers offer me another no fee 0% balance transfer after I finished off the last 0% balance transfer.
2. Closing cards will lower you score. It doesn’t really hurt if you keep a card open so you might as well save yourself some time by not closing it in the first place. Closing out a line of credit hurts because it lowers your total credit line and increases you utilization unless…
3. Roll it over into another card from the same issuer. Rather than cut off the credit, just roll it into another card. This way you keep the same limit and the same utilization but reduce the number of cards. Companies love this because it’s less paperwork and you have access to the same level of credit.

Unless you have a compelling reason to close out a credit card, there’s really no good reason to do so.