Credit issuers like to see a credit utilization rate of approximately 35% or less. Therefore, it is sometimes not in your favor to close credit cards without balances, or reduce your credit card limit. Just shifting balances from an existing card to another will not change the credit utilization rate, as it looks at the total amount of debt outstanding divided by your total credit card limits. In this case, you would be better off paying down debt as opposed to shifting from one of your credit cards to another.