We often cover which credit cards to get, when cards have the best-ever bonuses, how to maximize various card perks, and more.
And it’s for good reason. Rewards credit cards can unlock the ability to travel more for less.
I should know: I currently have 25 open card accounts, and each serves a purpose in my wallet and helps my family travel in ways that otherwise wouldn’t be possible.
But credit cards — especially ones with annual fees — can also quietly drain your budget if you aren’t maximizing their benefits.
So today, instead of talking about which card to get next, let’s talk about a few cards you may not need.
A card doesn’t have to be “bad” to be worth canceling, or at least downgrading (keep reading for details on that). In fact, some of the worst credit card values come from cards that once made perfect sense for your wallet but no longer match your spending or travel habits.
That’s why it’s worth doing a periodic wallet audit to make sure the cards you’re paying for still match how you actually spend and travel. With that in mind, here are five credit cards you probably shouldn’t have.
An airline card that offers lounge access you aren’t using
Premium airline cards often come with annual fees north of $500 — and for frequent travelers, that can absolutely be worth it. I have a United Club℠ Card (see rates and fees), for example, and I can justify the cost even with its $695 annual fee.
But it’s only worth it for me because I travel a lot on United Airlines and use the United Club benefit, which makes up a chunk of the annual fee. The extra miles, elite-qualifying perks, and headstart help, too, but lounge access is usually what drives the cost of premium airline cards.
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If you’re paying a large annual fee for airline lounge access you rarely use, it may be time to reconsider whether that card is still the right one for you. It’s also possible that a broader lounge network, not tied to any one airline, might work better for you.
That doesn’t mean you need to give up airline cards entirely. Most major airlines offer cards at multiple annual-fee levels, and lower-fee options can still provide perks like free checked bags, priority boarding and better award pricing without requiring a massive annual fee.
If you need help reviewing the options, here are various credit card options within these major airlines:
Premium rewards card with lots of credits you aren’t using
In recent years, several top premium rewards cards have gotten … more complicated.
For some people, premium cards have started to feel more like coupon books than travel rewards cards.
To be fair, you can still come out way ahead with premium cards loaded with hotel, dining, shopping and entertainment credits. I happily play that game.
But if you are paying $800+ a year for a card that has $1,500+ in annual credits and you aren’t using hardly any of them, then one of three things should be true.
- The annual fee genuinely doesn’t matter very much to your budget.
- You need to start maximizing more of the card’s perks to make it worth it.
- You’d probably be better off with a simpler card that better matches your habits.
If using various shopping and dining perks sounds more exhausting than rewarding to you — and the other card perks (like lounge access) don’t more than offset the annual fee — then I promise that it’s really OK to say goodbye to a premium credit card with a fancy name if it is no longer serving you.
You can always decide to get it again down the road if you change your mind. (Though the welcome bonus may be a one-time only event.)
Related: 7 cards that can replace your Amex Platinum
You have two cards with really similar benefits
Sometimes carrying multiple cards with overlapping benefits makes perfect sense. But in other cases, you may simply be paying multiple annual fees for perks that largely duplicate each other.
Unless there’s a specific strategy behind it, keeping multiple cards with nearly identical perks often isn’t worth the extra cost long-term.
That said, some extenuating circumstances where you might want to keep similar cards include:
As an example of when this can make sense, I actually have three Marriott credit cards, and they make sense for me not only because the elite-night credits stack and help me earn higher status, but also because each one gives me an annual award night worth more than the annual fee.
On the flip side, I recently canceled one of my American Airlines cards as it was extremely similar to another American Airlines card I had and didn’t offer any differentiated benefit I was actively using.
Related: Considering canceling your credit card? Here’s why you might want to “downgrade” it instead
Hotel card if you aren’t using the annual night award(s)
The hook many hotel credit cards offer year after year is an annual free night award. Sometimes you have to spend a certain amount to access these nights, and sometimes they come with having the card for another year.
Annual free-night certificates can become especially valuable as hotel award pricing grows more dynamic.
But — they are only worth it if you use them, and some are much harder to use than others. For example, I get two Marriott 35,000-point certificates a year from my Marriott cards.
I can consistently use them (often by topping them off with up to 25,000 Marriott points), but if I only stayed at higher-end Marriott hotels, I might not be as successful at putting them to use. And if that’s your situation with hotel annual award nights, you may want to consider whether keeping that hotel card is right for you.
Or maybe you should have a hotel card, but not the one in your wallet right now. If that’s potentially the case, here are options in some of the major hotel programs:
A card you got because it had a huge welcome bonus, but you just aren’t using it
Credit card issuers may not love this one, but let’s be honest: many of us have opened a card primarily because the welcome bonus was too good to ignore.
And sometimes you may find that you actually really dig the card and its ongoing perks, and it’s worth keeping even if you got it at first for the big bonus.
But once that first year passes, you may realize the card doesn’t actually deserve a permanent spot in your wallet. And in that case, sometimes the right thing to do is to cancel or downgrade it and move on to make space for the next one.
Do this before you cancel any credit cards
Before you cancel any credit cards, though, here are three steps to consider.
- Think about whether you are better off canceling or just downgrading the card. Often, after a year, you can downgrade a higher-fee card to a lower-fee card within the same family. You usually won’t get a welcome bonus for doing that, so factor that in, but it is an option to think about in some cases.
- If you’re on the fence, you can ask about any available retention offers when you are on the phone with a representative from the credit card company before you cancel. There might be an offer available to you for bonus points or a statement credit that makes the card worth keeping.
- Don’t cancel a card without understanding the implications for any rewards. For hotel and airline rewards, those points are typically in your broader hotel or frequent flyer account and are usually safe. But for bank points, if you are closing your last or only card associated with that reward currency, you’ll usually lose the points if you don’t transfer them out first, so act strategically.
Yes, closing a card can affect your credit score via factors like your credit utilization ratio and average account age. But beyond keeping your oldest accounts open and monitoring your debt-to-credit ratio, those concerns alone usually aren’t a good reason to keep paying annual fees on cards that no longer fit your wallet.
Bottom line
Credit cards are supposed to serve your financial and travel goals — not become permanent residents in your wallet simply because they once made sense.
If you’re unsure whether a card still deserves a spot in your wallet, ask yourself:
- Did I actually use this card’s biggest perks in the last year?
- Did I clearly get more value than I paid in the annual fee?
- Is there another card in my wallet doing essentially the same thing?
There’s rarely one right answer for when it’s time to cancel or downgrade a card, but those questions should point you in the right direction.
Related: Best travel credit cards
Disclaimer : This story is auto aggregated by a computer programme and has not been created or edited by DOWNTHENEWS. Publisher: thepointsguy.com
