re: Will canceling an Amex card hurt my credit?

It isn't the act of cancelling the card, it's reducing your available credit line.

The scoring algorithm looks into how much of your available credit you have borrowed against and owe back. So if you have a $10,000 total credit limit, and you've borrowed $4,000, you have a 40% credit utilization rate. That isn't enormous but is enough to dock you a few points.

Now suppose you close a credit card that has a $5,000 limit on it because you never use it. Now you have a total available amount of $5,000 (the original 10K - the 5K you closed) and owe $4,000. This brings your utilization rate to 80%, which is quite high and will impact your score.

Note, however, that we aren't talking about huge impacts. This is nothing like being 30 days or more late on a payment. This isn't terrible but just something to keep in mind. Plus it goes away as you pay down the debt, you don't have to wait years for anything to drop off your report.

One possibility is that you could call a different card (or apply for a new one) and get the limit raised if you can. Once that is done, dump AMEX.