Share your insights or perspective on the financial matter presented in the input.

Is it ever a good idea to close credit cards?
There's no harm in keeping them open.  Like you said, closing the lines will potentially hurt your utilization.  The extent of that impact will depend on your particular situation.   There are situations where closing a line will have no actual impact on your utilization.  If you have 100k of open credit and a debt load of $2k, if you close a $10k line you won't really have an issue because your utilization is 2% and closing the line will take you to 2.2%.