If you know anything about how credit cards work, you know that paying off your balance in full by the due date each month is key to managing debt and keeping your credit score high. However, many of us are not aware that there are other things you could be doing that will negatively impact your credit score. Lucky for us, John Ulzheimer, in a recent post on The Simple Dollar, outlines a few of those things for us.

One key practice that can hurt your credit score without you realizing it, is closing down the cards that you don’t use anymore. Your credit utilization ratio, the amount of debt you hold compared to the total credit limit you have, is a key factor in your credit score. And when you close down an unused account, you are automatically lowering the credit limit you are entitled to. For some credit reports, that will hurt your score.

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