Do people have a "max" amount of credit that they can be approved for total?

[takeshi74]

There's no universal max but each creditor will determine the max that they are specifically willing to extend to you based on your credit and income.

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@Anonymous wrote:

how do you know what is "too much"?

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When it's cited as a denial reason.  We can't tell you how the various creditors determine what they're willing to extend to you.  There are some assumed possibilities based on aggegated anecdotal evidence like the "40% of  income" for AmEx but generalizations like that haven't been properly proven to be correct for all situations.

[Ghoshida]

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@Anonymous wrote:

I know income, length of employment, credit history etc. make the decision on how much you get in credit, but how do you know what is "too much"? Such has someone with $35,000 a year income (like myself), how do I figure out what my max would be? 

Just curious

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1) Some lenders have an internal cap. For e.g., AMEX won't give you a CLI beyond a certain theshold unless you submit documentation that they require, and may not even then. Chase won't give you a new card if you already have a certain number of cards and limit with them, but may agree to reallocate some of the existing limits. Some members here have posted such limit as 40% of your income; which means Chase or AMEX each may not extend more than say 15k to you, across all of their cards. But this is not proven for certain, I guess.

2) Some lenders won't give you a card if they see high credit limits already. Many CUs seem to fall in this category. Two reason being: (a) You may suddenly take a lot of debt across all your cards that your income can't support and (b) You may not use their card but simply keep it for util padding, in which case what's in it for them? Most big banks though seem to have a higher tolerance limit when it comes to them extending their first card to you. Your existing creditors may panic when you get new credit. However, I do not know if they panic simply because you're applying for more credit (# of applications) or you have more credit (overall limit). Adverse action by existing creditors because of new credit gets reported here pretty regularly.

That said, as Takeshi mentioned, it's not possible to predict with 100% accuracy when you're reaching such threshold. I have income similar to yours and I have approx $50k in CL (1.5X income). 70% of that has been accumulated in the past 8 months. I apped for 2 new cards in this time, did not face "lot of credit already" problem. I won't bother until I start getting close to 40% of income with each individual lender and at least 2X overall CL.

[leoment]

I'm just over 2x my annual income - with around 18% UTIL.  While I'm sure I can still get approved for more credit, at this point I'm more focused on getting my UTIL down before seeking any more.

[Anonymous]

Thanks for the replies everyone! I appriciate the help clearing it up I wasn't sure if it went by monthly income vs. annual. And good to know about Chase and AMEX. I have about a year and a half of history (6 months with credit cards) so I doubt I will be getting 50k limits by my 19th birthday