@newdaddy113 wrote:Hey All,
General question I see a lot of people with 100k 200k 500k available credit. My question is how much income do you have to have to have such limits? I make between 95 and 150k annually. With such income how much credit can I get in total from creditors? My scores are over 700 accross all boards. Thank you
Well, you will see fewer people with 500K, though $100k can be quite common. Given your scores and income level, you could set $100k as a reasonable goal. To get there, you need a strategy, which means considering all the options and pathways, then deciding what is the most value to you.
1) Capital One Venture - If you have had a Capital One card prior, and closed that, then you may not get good results. But if you are new to Capital One or have some sort of prior, still open Capital One card, you could see a nice limit from Venture. Go to the Capital One website and use the pre-qualified link. Enter your info, and if they return with specific cards like Venture or QuickSilver, and there is a specific APR listed, not a range, and particularly if the APR listed is the best available, then that's a good sign. CapOne might still get you a good limit, the prequal isn't a negative indicator if you don't have a specific response, but with specific offers it's good. I got $30k even though I did not get a prequalification specific offer. Capital One will hard pull all three bureaus, but that's the price of admission.
The QuickSilver is another choice, no annual fee, and very good rewards/benefits from the card.
2) Citibank. Go to their prequalification page and check for offers. If they come back with a specific APR, preferably the best APR for each card, that is nearly a lock for that APR and a good limit.
3) Bank of America. With your history there, if you like the $2k card you have, you can ask them for a CLI, ask for $25k and see what they come back with. It will be a HP to do the check, but you'll likely get some increase in CL. If you don't particularly like the BofA card you currently have, app for one of the cash back or other rewards cards, and use the HP for a rewards card. (prequalification at BofA is reported to be useless, so you just have to app)
4) There are many threads and comments here about how to maximize your NFCU relationship. $2k after 18 months is almost nothing, compared to what others have been able to build here. We commonly see multiple $25k cards from NFCU.
5) With your AMEX Centurion relationship, you could consider apping for another card with noAF, such as the EveryDay, BlueCash EveryDay, or the Hilton HHonors card. I've had the Delta Gold card since July 2013, which started at $2k. All three of the subsquent cards I've applied for, Delta Platinum, HHonors, and SPG, each got $10k starting limits.
Before starting with the apps, however, it's important to outline what you are looking for from your cards. Straight cash back? Rewards with miles / hotel points? If you go the co-branded card route, such as airlines or hotels, you can add a lot of cards, but those cards will have an AF. The hotel cards are usually including a free annual night, and so the AF is a form of prepayment for the hotel stay.
With your Chase relationship, you could look into the Marriott and Hyatt cards. The Hyatt card is actually one of the better points value cards available. The AF is worth it for the annual night, gets you out of the house periodically.
With Citi, the ThankYou Premier and Prestige cards offer good rewards and sign up bonus, and usually pretty good limits. Annual Fees are necessary. You can see how you rate by using the "travel rewards" option on the Citi prequalification website.
The prequalification sites can be checked monthly, if you don't get good results initially. Files change, their view of the file changes, so results will probably improve over time if they aren't the best yet.
@newdaddy113 wrote:Thanks for the feedback. This is very very helpful. I went to the capital one site. I got the quicksilver with an APR of 0% intro APR until May 2016; 17.9% variable APR after that and transfer information of 0% intro APR until May 2016; 17.9% variable APR after that; 3% fee on the amount transferred until May 2016.
I also got an offer for the venture reward 17.9% variable APR and transfer information of 17.9% variable APR; No Transfer Fee.
For Citi I got the double cash card with 0% Intro APR on purchases and balance transfers for 15 months; after that, the variable APR will be 22.99%.
The 0% on CapOne is only a promo rate. They are offering you 17.9% APR, which is Ok, but you can do better, if you want to wait.
Same with Citi, 0% promo rate. The Citi APR at 22.99 is encouraging because it's one number, but discouraging because their maximum APR and most importantly it is not 12.99%. To get the best results, you might want to wait for 12.99%, or not. If you handle the Double Cash as a PIF card, the APR doesn't really matter. The inital CL could be rather low. This is just speculation on my part, your actual results from any app will depend on how the CCC looks at your file.
I'd suggest doing more research before doing ANY apping. Those numbers are promising, but you probably want to wait for those two feedback sources to improve over the next few months, to track your progress. When those APR show solid improvement, that indicates your responses from other lenders will be good as well.
Spend some time searching for and asking about NFCU options. There's a thread here somewhere about the best approaches to NFCU, started and updated by creditaddict.
Edit: The APR for the Quicksilver is not terrible, and an advantage for getting that now is, you get some feedback for a CapOne CL, and start building some history with them. Later, after 6 months to a year, apping Venture likely gets you a better limit.
