My wife is a manager of a bank branch and her brother is a credit analyst at another bank, and I've been told the reason it impacts your credit is because you n

My wife is a manager of a bank branch and her brother is a credit analyst at another bank, and I've been told the reason it impacts your credit is because you now have less credit available to you, and you're likely now using more of your available credit. If you have $50 available on one card and $50 on another card, you have $100 of available credit. If you close one of the cards, you now only have $50 of available credit. If one card is maxed out and the other is empty (because you're about to close it), before you close it you are only using 50% of your available credit. Once you close it, you're now using 100% of your available credit, which looks bad.