The collective wisdom of MyFico beats the "experts" again

[Gunnar419]

I ran into this "expert" article today on why you should be careful of asking for increases on your credit cards.

 http://www.businessinsider.com/when-you-should-be-wary-of-asking-for-a-credit-increase-2015-5

I'm not posting it here because it's brilliant or useful or anything like that. The opposite, in fact. As I read it, I was struck probably six or seven times by how misleading, overly general, or just plain wrong its "expert" advice is. Somebody got paid to write this article and the people quoted in it get paid to give financial advice, but any cc thread at MyFico on any given day of the week has better information in it.

Kudos to my fellow MyFicoans. You're more than experts.

[vanillabean]

I would be interested in if you could elaborate on those "probably six or seven times".

[Gunnar419]

"Still, he recommends that you only increase your credit limit when you actually need to for a specific reason."

"This is because when you ask for a credit limit increase, there's going to be a hard inquiry into your credit."

"In FICO score terms, Sullivan thinks around 720 is where you're almost certain to get a credit limit increase."

"What about how long you've had the card? Sullivan says that doesn't play much into whether or not you're going to get a credit limit increase."

"Finally, creditors will look into public records"

All these statements and a few more are either overly general or misleading in some way. Waiting for a "specific reason" to ask for a CLI could mean you end up not having the CL available when you need it. There's NOT always a hard inquiry. No way is a 720 FICO a guarantee of getting an increase; there are too many other factors like income and age of accounts. (My scores are over 800 and I've still been turned down for CLIs.) The notion that the age of the card makes NO difference in CLIs is misleading; for some lenders that's true, for others it makes a LOT of difference.

And I include the last one ("Finally, creditors will look ...") because the entire description of how cc companies evaluate our profiles is misleading. The article gives the impression that CLI approval is some long process where each item in your profile is taken out and examined separately and methodically, which just isn't what you experience when you hit a luv button.

In the entire article over generalization = misleading and sometimes downright wrong. While I listed just five instances up there, bottom line is that the article is completely useless as a guide to getting CLIs.

[adavis425]

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@Gunnar419 wrote:

"Still, he recommends that you only increase your credit limit when you actually need to for a specific reason."

"This is because when you ask for a credit limit increase, there's going to be a hard inquiry into your credit."

"In FICO score terms, Sullivan thinks around 720 is where you're almost certain to get a credit limit increase."

"What about how long you've had the card? Sullivan says that doesn't play much into whether or not you're going to get a credit limit increase."

"Finally, creditors will look into public records"

All these statements and a few more are either overly general or misleading in some way. Waiting for a "specific reason" to ask for a CLI could mean you end up not having the CL available when you need it. There's NOT always a hard inquiry. No way is a 720 FICO a guarantee of getting an increase; there are too many other factors like income and age of accounts. (My scores are over 800 and I've still been turned down for CLIs.) The notion that the age of the card makes NO difference in CLIs is misleading; for some lenders that's true, for others it makes a LOT of difference.

And I include the last one ("Finally, creditors will look ...") because the entire description of how cc companies evaluate our profiles is misleading. The article gives the impression that CLI approval is some long process where each item in your profile is taken out and examined separately and methodically, which just isn't what you experience when you hit a luv button.

In the entire article over generalization = misleading and sometimes downright wrong. While I listed just five instances up there, bottom line is that the article is completely useless as a guide to getting CLIs.

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The vast majority of consumers outside of the bunch on these forums don't know that. There are any number of members here who could have written a better article. Gunnar419 included. 

[Revelate]

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@Gunnar419 wrote:

"Still, he recommends that you only increase your credit limit when you actually need to for a specific reason."

"This is because when you ask for a credit limit increase, there's going to be a hard inquiry into your credit."

"In FICO score terms, Sullivan thinks around 720 is where you're almost certain to get a credit limit increase."

"What about how long you've had the card? Sullivan says that doesn't play much into whether or not you're going to get a credit limit increase."

"Finally, creditors will look into public records"

All these statements and a few more are either overly general or misleading in some way. Waiting for a "specific reason" to ask for a CLI could mean you end up not having the CL available when you need it. There's NOT always a hard inquiry. No way is a 720 FICO a guarantee of getting an increase; there are too many other factors like income and age of accounts. (My scores are over 800 and I've still been turned down for CLIs.) The notion that the age of the card makes NO difference in CLIs is misleading; for some lenders that's true, for others it makes a LOT of difference.

And I include the last one ("Finally, creditors will look ...") because the entire description of how cc companies evaluate our profiles is misleading. The article gives the impression that CLI approval is some long process where each item in your profile is taken out and examined separately and methodically, which just isn't what you experience when you hit a luv button.

In the entire article over generalization = misleading and sometimes downright wrong. While I listed just five instances up there, bottom line is that the article is completely useless as a guide to getting CLIs.

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Agree with everything you suggest other than how creditors evaluate the reports: HFT technologies have long since been adopted by banks for some of their business, evaluating a potential customer for CLI or approval the data is easily accessible and at compute speeds, not difficult to analyze.  There's tons of data publically available even for someone like me who's never had a Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn or similar social media account and used cash or debit cards up until 4ish years ago.

I would not unequivocally state that they aren't doing that level of evaluation - I know even from my own financial industry experience that even small lenders pull from a number of sources and they aren't exactly state of the art (or remotely close) when it comes to data acquisition and analysis.

[Anonymous]

I agree with everyone.  There's really no rhyme or reason why.  I can get auto clis or hit that luv button.  Or get denied, maybe 2/3 day message.  In my experience, I never know when or if I will get a cli.  And an hp can cause my score to do down a bit, but by next week, it's right back up there.