<prompt> Human: About 3 years ago, my income was 200,000, my credit score was 800, I had no debt to speak of. Fast forward to today: I havent worked in 3 years, unexpected medical expenses have been a drag, havinf eaten through savings, I have gradually gone deeper into credit card debt. My credit score has fallen to 600. My credit card balance is 75,000 and Im butting up against all card limits. Credit Cards: -AmEx Green charge card: balance 35,000. -Visa credit card: balance 30,000. -MasterCard credit card: balance 9,000. -Visa credit card 2: balance 1,000. -AmEx Blue credit card: 0 balance, not using. -MasterCard credit card 2: 0 balance, not using. I have not been late in making payments. Even the AmEx Green charge card balance is pay over time. I am anticipating a relatively large one-time sum to me in the next several months, enough to pay down all balances in full. So my questions are: 1. Once able, should I pay down all cards immediately? 2. Do I cancel certain cards? Which cards? Id like to keep 3 cards in the future. 3. What can I do to best repair my credit score?My instinct is to pay them all down as soon as possible. But, is there any advantage to paying down the balances over 3-6 months vs paying down in full immediately? I cant say I understand the formulas for the credit houses. Thank you. Assistant: Closing accounts never helps your credit scores.Theres nothing negative on your credit reports like missed payments, collections accounts, etc. then paying down your balances should get your credit scores back to where they were before. It looks something like this: If there are medical collections on your credit reports I would try this process to pay the doctorhospital directly and get it removed from your credit reports: Just calling the debt collector and paying them is unlikely to help your credit scores.With that said I find the Amex Green card to be pretty worthless, certainly not enough to justify the annual fee. I would close it after spending your points or transferring them to a no-fee points-earning Amex card.Human: Closing accounts never helps your credit scores. Whats the logic?Thank you.  <response>: A portion of your score is based on account age - things like the age of your oldest accounts, newest accounts, and the average age of your accounts. This can be affected by closing cards. Another thing it can effect is your utilization because closing an account wipes out all of its available credit line. Say you have 200k in available credit and are using 100k youd be at 50 utilization. Say you close a card with no balance but a 50k limit your total available credit is now 150k and that 100k balance is now at 66 utilization. 