When reviewing your credit to decide if you should keep an account open or closed you need to consider its affect on your credit score. It is good to only have about 3-5 open credit cards so when you decide to close some of them you will want to close the accounts that were opened recently. Older accounts have more payment history and closing them usually results in lowering your credit score. However, what you choose to do with these accounts once they have been paid off is up to you.
Another item to keep in mind when you are paying off credit accounts is that credit card balances over 30 percent of the credit limit negatively affects your credit score, so try to keep your balances below 30% of your credit limit. Naturally, having accounts that are paid off will not hurt your credit score.