Good Rating Credit Cuts

[patriotgene]

I've been hearing that banks are cutting or canceling credit cards for people who have good credit because they tend to carry little to no balance.  I rarely carry a balance on a credit card. I was just approved in January for a B of A Visa Signature. My Best Buy card was recently cut from $1800 to $300. I don't know why. It may be because I had not used it in 18 months. My Visa card has 8.99% for the next nine months. Should I carry a balance for a while? Is anyone else concerned because they have good credit and carry little balances? What steps if any are you taking? Thanks.

[haulingthescoreup]

I don't think it's so much not carrying balances as it is using only a small fraction of the extended credit.

Banks have to reduce the amount of extended credit on their banks, so they're looking at two groups of folks: those with big CL's who really don't use much of them, and those who rarely use their cards at all.

And then some of it seems chosen with the dartboard approach.

I refuse to carry a balance and thus pay interest to save my credit lines. If they reduce the lines, so be it. I insulate myself from possible score hits by allowing a small balance to report on one card. (I'd have to lose nearly $50K in extended credit before my util went above 1%.) Instead, I use every card every month, taking turns on using one more heavily in a given month, to at least show some usage. Unfortunately for this tactic (fortunately for my wallet), I don't shop much beyond gas and groceries, but I do have cell phone bills, etc on my cards. And in the meantime, I'm saving my tiny brains out, getting as much cash in the bank as I can, because I have no idea what is coming our way.

[patriotgene]

I appreciate your advice. My Visa Signature has a limit of $5000. The minium limit for a Visa Signature. I use it for virtually everything I buy and pay it off when the bill arrives. My other major card is a Mastercard with a $9000 limit. However, I don't use it that much since there are no rewards with it.

As I said, I got the Visa Signature in January. It, however, is causing me a problem because it has no preset spending limit causing only my high balance to be reported which had been about $600. I spoke to B of A a week ago and they told me they will report the limit as $5000 but it will take up to thirty days. I hope they follow through; the artificial increase of my utilization ratio has really dinged my score. I put $2000 on the card this month, so if nothing else hopefully they will report that has my high balance.

[patriotgene]

Haulingthescreup,

I am also not spending much outside the necessary. Of course, even in the best of times I'm usually fairly conservative in my spending. I don't put my utility bills on my card.  Just groceries, gas and any other shopping I do. I was able to boost this month's spending on the card due to some atypical expenses.

Message Edited by patriotgene on 04-05-2009 10:51 AM