Hey!
Today we’re talking about credit card cancellation. Canceling a credit card is easy, but there are some tips to know about before doing so which we’ll go over too.
How to cancel
To permanently cancel a card, go to the card on your mobile or tablet, swipe to the one that’s missing, and click on Cancel and Replace My Card. Next, make sure the address where we’ll send the new card is correct; if it’s not, please write with the old and new addresses to p.o. box 708 Sandiford, Dublin 18, or go into your local branch with a photo ID. Do you want to keep your old pin? If you do, we’ll send your new card on the next working day. If you want to change it, we will send your new pin in two working days.
When to Cancel
Let’s say you have two cards right now. I would not cancel any cards until you build up to about five cards as a strong base. There are a lot of cards out there that have either no annual fee or a good sign-up bonus, and you can downgrade to cards with no annual fee after the first year, but to chase the chase, we have the freedom to have freedom unlimited. Chase Sapphire Preferred and even Chase Sapphire Reserve: can we downgrade them? The United Card can be downgraded to a no-annual-fee card; there are quite a few different options, and then if you look over to American
Express you have to every day card and every day prefer the blue Cash every day all of the Hilton cards can be downgraded to no annual fee version as well as all of the Delta cards and this is just two issuers we have a lot of other issuers not gonna list all the cards but you get the idea that there are a ton of cards that you can either downgrade to or that you can apply for that will not have an annual fee once you put up to that base maybe it’s not five cards maybe it’s just four cards or three cards whatever a number makes sense for you and then at that point I would recommend cancelling cards only if they have annual fees that can’t be downgraded the rationale there would be never someone who got a capital one card because you needed it to build up your credit history because maybe you had a default or something else happen in your life so you needed that card it did what it needed to do but right now you don’t need it anymore because you have better cards at that point once you have that foundation that would recommend cancelling that annual fee card on a flipside if it’s just a card that you don’t you I would still probably keep it because it’s not really hurting you
Consider downgrading
The next thing that you should always do before canceling a credit card which is to explore. Explore whether there’s actually a way to downgrade the card to a cheaper or no-fee option instead. there are quite a few benefits to downgrading the card instead of cancelling because you’re still preserving that credit account on your credit file. you’re still able to have it contribute to the overall strength of your credit history and you’re still preserving that relationship with the credit card issuer instead of severing it entirely by canceling the card. if your reason for canceling the card was because you didn’t want to pay a high annual fee again then by downgrading the card to a cheaper or no-fee card you can also sidestep that problem. the possibilities for downgrading your cards vary from issuer to issuer. now most of the big five banks in Canada do have a no-fee version of some of their premium travel credit cards so if you no longer see value in keeping the premium travel credit card and paying that premium annual fee then you can downgrade it.
