The Safe Way to Cancel a Credit Card
Typically, it’s best to leave your credit card accounts open, even if you’re not using them. However, there are a few valid reasons why you may want to close an account.
There’s a reason why credit experts advise against closing unused credit cards. “Canceling a credit card has the potential to reduce your score, not increase it,” Beverly Harzog, credit card expert and consumer finance analyst for U.S. News & World Report, explains.
This potential score drop often occurs because closing a credit card can impact your credit utilization ratio. The ratio measures how much of your total available credit is being used, according to your credit reports. The more available credit you use (per your reports), the worse the impact will be on your score.
Read this article for a more detailed explanation of why you might want to cancel a credit card account, and a cancellation checklist to follow should you decide to do so.
Stout Bowman regularly posts important and interesting information on our blog. Current topics include credit/debit/loans, estate planning, insurance, investing, Medicare, retirement, Social Security and taxes, as well as general information that we think you might find of interest. 
We have been publishing an email newsletter for our clients and friends since 2016. Links to all of the newsletters can be found on our newsletter page, with the most recent listed first. We try to keep our emails short, so there are typically only three articles in each one, most of which link to other articles in the financial and mainstream press. 
We also have a page on our site for the latest news about our company, notice of any upcoming events, and a market commentary to discuss what our advisors and other financial industry experts conclude about the previous investment performance and what we might expect the markets and the economy will do in the coming months. 
Many news organizations offer what is called a Rich Site Summary (RSS) feed, a listing of the latest changes to their site's content. We have subscribed to several of these news feeds and present a list of their latest ten articles on a page on this website to save our clients the hassle of going to multiple websites just to see what is available. Currently, we subscribe to 
At Stout Bowman every investment client is first a financial planning client; it's important to go through that process before we make any professional investment recommendations. Therefore, we strive to make financial planning understandable and comfortable every step of the way. One way to do that is to provide our clients access to financial education resources. To that end, we have subscribed to educational websites to receive their news feeds and present a list of their latest ten articles on a page on this website. Currently, we offer