CLI and income. .

[Ghoshida]

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@Anonymous wrote:
Hello,

I would like to ask if your income affects the amount of credit you get, when you ask for a CLI?

I asked this because I seem in the forums where people mentioned that it's good to ask for more than what you really want, when asking for an increase..

But how does the CC sees us in terms of your income, when approving your request?

I made roughly $43,000.

Thank you!

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It depends on how you are asking for a CLI.

Are you sending a soft pull request? Most of the times, the bank will have a preset increase (through CLI buttons) for you and you really can't just ask more. You can do that however when you ask for a hard pull CLI. Personally, I don't do HP CLIs most of the time.

My suggestion is to put the real income + any side money sources that you genuinely make. Credit Unions are a bit stingy in this respect and can make noise about pyramiding / escalating debt and what not; big banks on the other hand are mostly bothered about their own exposure. Anecdotally, Chase / AMEX are known to keep their total exposure across all of their cards to approx 40% of your income. 

That said, they do not care a lot with your total credit limits; as long as they're not huge in absolute terms (AMEX asks for income verification docs, tax returns etc on their own cards when the limits come close to $25-30k, no hard line) or as long as they're not many multiples of your income. My total CLs are approaching 2.5X my indiv income and I'm still getting some CLIs here and there. 

TLDR: A bank won't care much if your income is $40k, total credit lines equal $70k, and their share in that is say $8k. But if those figures become $90k, $300k, and $40k, respectively, they might start digging

[takeshi74]

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@Anonymous wrote:
But how does the CC sees us in terms of your income, when approving your request?

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The CC itself doesn't see anything.  The creditor determines how your income affects your limit/CLI.  Creditors are not all identical.  As pointed in this thread, different creditors can and do have differening limits on what they're willing to extend versus income.  Also, as stated above, income is just one factor and it's not just income alone that determines limit/CLI.  One with good credit and lower income could potentially receive a higher limit/CLI than one with poor credit and higher income.

[longtime_lurker]

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@Anonymous wrote:
yeah according to a lot i have seen AMEX will go up to 30% of your annual income.

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That's often quoted, and at least in my case - completely wrong. I'm at 20k on 2 revolvers, have a PRG, and a reported income of 30k to AMEX.

[JSS3]

40,000 income
105,000 available credit

[Anonymous]

Thank you all for your input..it's appreciated.