@Revelate wrote:
@webhopper wrote:
@Revelate wrote:
@MountainHiker wrote:I wonder if having cards with $5K + hurt your chances of getting other cards with large limits or could it work just the opposite?
Depends on the lender; however, I would submit that 5K is well too low of a margin: namely, 5K lines are nearly always beneficial for future approvals.
Where it goes a little sideways is for the long-established folks with multiple 25K+ tradelines without a commeasurate spend or income. We've seen a few folks who have received the "You have enough credit limits available already" type response, but generally that's a low percentage of the population.
I'm certainly trying nearly every trick in the stupid book beyond outright buying a 5K+ limit on a secured card, and I may go that route too in the future if it's required for me to break that ceiling.
I think you start running into issues around the 10-15k mark... your limits have to match your actual income... higher income begets higher limits when you're looking at 20k+ CLs
To a certain amount spend factors too; there's the grey area of reimburseable business expenses which don't necessiate requiring a business card which can substantially boost one's spend outside of one's income.
As an example speaking only marginally hypothetically: we use the Amex Travel service where I primarily work, but the first thing I had to do was submit my profile and on that was a personal credit card for airline / hotel / car reservations... and the amount of travel I'd have to do to qualify for a corporate card is really high. In 2014 where I may be setting up datacenters all over the lower 48 in addition to likely going to some of our live events, wouldn't qualify me for one even, and that's probably an additional 30K of reimbursable expenses run through my personal credit cards.
This is another method for driving up CL's; however, it's probably a small percentage of folks. Also those who do carry business cards, sometimes those report to personal credit as well. AFAIK I think these are some of the things benefitting you personally Webby?
I don't know the Card Act language specifically, but I think the expectation is that the lenders will be paid back, and that doesn't have to be straight taxable income in order to do so even if for most people that's what's used?
Reimbursable work expenses drive up my spending by about 10 - 15k per year and it always gets paid off pretty fast, because I get reimbused on the Thursday after the work trip is complete. I do about 4 work trips per year and I also pay for work stuff on my personal cards and do reimbursements on some vendors because its easier than setting them up in our accounting system if I'm only going to use them once. Also, our accounts payable takes 45 days to pay out, so on payments to the Department of Labor or the State, I go ahead and pay with Credit card and get reimbursed because if they dont get paid on time, they will threaten to come and lock our our equipment at work. This only happened once (the threat, not the lockout) but if they ever did it, it would be a DISASTER for my employer and I would be responsible.
Also helps that my husband has his own income which is not used as a basis for determining limits, but his income definately goes into the pot as far as paying for our expenses. Last year he made 60k, and had no debt to his name (his scores are lower so if we put something in his name, the interest rate would be high)
This year he stopped working to become a full time student and his income decreased to about 20k per year, so our spending has decreased from about 3k per month, down to about 1500 per month since he's home and he cooks meals and we asked our housekeeper to only come once per month instead of every week.
I have a business Amex which does not report to personal and there is no way that I'd ever use 10% of that limit, as the business income is too small to really justify a lot of business spending... Our business spend is usually at Lowes or other hardware stores / home improvement vendors. Recently I bought 10 new office chairs for the conference room at work using my business card, and I don't think my plant manager minds me doing reimbursment for those types of things. Also, my graduate school tuition is reimbursed by my employer, up to 5k per year, so that's another source of spend that I wouldn't normally have
If I had a different job or a different employer, my spend would be MUCH less.
FICO 9: 
Filed Chapter 13 on 6/1/2017 after job loss. Discharged 6/1/2022.
Goal: Gardening!
Filed Chapter 13 on 6/1/2017 after job loss. Discharged 6/1/2022.
Goal: Gardening!
