topic Re: Credit limit cap per vendor by income in Credit Cards

Credit limit cap per vendor by income

Anonymous — Mon, 17 Jul 2017 23:46:37 GMT

There are some interesting discussions going around in a couple threads regarding CL caps by income for individual vendors. KIB has a BOA thread discussing his relatively high income, utilzation, and CLI success. There is also some talk in the AMEX 35k IV thread about a potential 2/3 of income cap.

I doubt anyone can answer this question with absolute certainty (a lot of variables with scores, util, etc.) but I'd be interested to know what the highest CL expressed as a percentage of income is per vendor on an individual card. No real reason to know or care other than simple interest. For the purposes of this thread, AMEX should be discussed as revolvers only.

I'll start out with two numbers that will be quickly eclipsed. Scores are low end of super prime:

Chase: 18%

AMEX (revolver): 11%

Re: Credit limit cap per vendor by income

csryang — Tue, 18 Jul 2017 18:03:32 GMT

Uh I misunderstood it. I thought it's total exposure but I think you meant highest CL per card

So I updated my data:

Amex: 35%

Barclays: 35%

BOA: 15%

Chase: 29%

Citi: 10%

Capital One: 10%

Discover: 15%

Wells fargo: 14%

US Bank: 23%

Re: Credit limit cap per vendor by income

Anonymous — Tue, 18 Jul 2017 01:12:13 GMT

Interesting! I'd be ridiculously excited to hit even half my income with 3 vendors. Hopefully we can get a few more to participate this time. This has the potential to be very useful for people.

Any interest in sharing a rough range for your income? I think I've mentioned my listed income before but it is 220k.

Re: Credit limit cap per vendor by income

FireMedic1 — Tue, 18 Jul 2017 08:33:53 GMT

This is cool.

Cap1 60%

Disco 14%

Re: Credit limit cap per vendor by income

Anonymous — Tue, 18 Jul 2017 11:42:16 GMT

This is quite interesting. Capital One and Discover are the only issuers on the current list that I have cards from, so I'd be interested to get data points for credit unions such as Apple as well as Synchrony and Comenity. Anyway, it looks like right now I still have a fair amount of room left to expand on Capital One and especially on Discover.

Re: Credit limit cap per vendor by income

Jimp2323 — Tue, 18 Jul 2017 12:58:12 GMT

Are you asking about a cap per product or total liability from a company? (My assumption would be total amout of credit issued as many individual products have hard caps regardless of a borrower's income.)

Edit: Disregard...I went back and actually read the OP...individual card.

Re: Credit limit cap per vendor by income

Anonymous — Tue, 18 Jul 2017 13:09:11 GMT

No worries; it is easy to miss that.

I think there is a whole 'nother conversation worth having about total exposure with a given company. Specifically, the discussions I referenced were about individual products at a pretty high percentage of income. Obviously, this wouldn't work out as well with hard product caps for reasonably high earners. NFCU can't get me above 36% and First Tech (which has an astronomically high single card limit) can't get me above 45% of W2 income on a single card.

I'm fascinated by the concept that at least some providers think that 75-100% of annual income is appropriate for a single payment instrument. I'm guessing (but not sure!) that this is drastically harder to acheive as income goes up, even though disposable income is directly correlated with increasing income. This has become the basis for the discussion, but I'm not opposed to either starting a different thread or allowing for some drift in this one. The only problem with that is there is also a fascinating discussion to be had around CLs and asset base. We'll have to save that for another time...

Re: Credit limit cap per vendor by income

Gmood1 — Tue, 18 Jul 2017 13:42:22 GMT

This is total exposure, not by single cards. Some creditors of these accounts do allow the total exposure on one card.

Citi 30% (I feel there's still room to grow here. Soup still being served)
Navy Fed 47% ( no more soup for me here)
Discover 14% (room to grow, soup kitchen closed 7 months ago for updates)
Capital One 49.5% ( no more soup)
Synchrony 100% ( room to grow.. oddly, unless the food inspector shows up and shuts it down)
BofA 50% ( think the soup kitchen is now closed.lol)
Chase 47.5% (soup kitchen closed and remodeled into a gym)
Amex 45% ( room to grow, soup kitchen still open)
NASA 38.4% ( no more soup)
Penfed 43% ( no more soup)
USAA 41% ( soup kitchen still open, 50% possible)
FNBO 14.5% ( soup kitchen open, however they give me small child portions.lol)

Blispay 11.5% ( soup kitchen never opened, they base limit off EX FICO score)

Re: Credit limit cap per vendor by income

Anonymous — Tue, 18 Jul 2017 13:20:32 GMT

I could be wrong but doesnt' amount of income have something to do with this? I mean I would think it would easier to get 60k from Chase if your income was 60k than to get a million dollar credit line from chase if your annual income was 1 million dollars. Am I wrong on this?

Re: Credit limit cap per vendor by income

iced — Tue, 18 Jul 2017 13:46:23 GMT

@Anonymous wrote:
I could be wrong but doesnt' amount of income have something to do with this? I mean I would think it would easier to get 60k from Chase if your income was 60k than to get a million dollar credit line from chase if your annual income was 1 million dollars. Am I wrong on this?

This. Higher percentages become more attainable as income approaches 0. I could have a $100,000 CL on a Chase card and still have a lower percentage than a student making effectively $0 with a $2500 CL card.

There are also limitations and risk factors the banks are looking at more than just simple income, and several of those factors only tend to become relevant at the higher incomes. One example of this is how some banks put a static cap on the limit of a card (such as $50000 for some CUs). A person making $1,000,000 a year will have a CL limit of 5% of his/her income, something that someone making $50,000 surpasses with a CL of $2,501.

If the goal is to see who has a card that's the largest percentage of their individual income, great. If it's to see where each bank's magic number on limits is, this approach is flawed from the start.

Re: Credit limit cap per vendor by income

Anonymous — Tue, 18 Jul 2017 13:47:27 GMT

@Anonymous wrote:
I could be wrong but doesnt' amount of income have something to do with this? I mean I would think it would easier to get 60k from Chase if your income was 60k than to get a million dollar credit line from chase if your annual income was 1 million dollars. Am I wrong on this?

You're right that there are likely fixed numeric credit limits for banks that are unrelated to percentage of income, which will affect people with higher incomes in terms of percentage.

For me, my reported income for credit applications in the last year was $31,000 and the percentages of that in credit limits were as follows:

Capital One 35%

Barclay: 8%

American Express 35%

And then the card I've had for a while,

Chase was originally 44% and has now dropped to 3% of the aforementioned reported income

Re: Credit limit cap per vendor by income

K-in-Boston — Tue, 18 Jul 2017 13:56:59 GMT

For me I have to break it up into individual cards and AU cards. Obviously, my wife and I are at a bit of an advantage due to being able to cherry pick which cards to add each other to (for age of account, credit line, and/or utilization purposes) and being able to combine our incomes. Household W2 income is in the 210s.

Our largest revolving line is her $60,000 BOA - that's around 28% of income.

My largest revolving line is one of my new BOAs at $28,600 (~13%), which was $34,600 (~16%) for about 10 minutes until I took the SUB offer and opened the Cash Rewards to use the same CLI HP and they automatically reallocated $6000 from it to open the $7500 card. (I don't think I am actually maxed out with BOA, just capped until the next time I would be CLI eligible. I'll test that thoroughly next year when I ask for CLIs on all 3 of my cards before combining the two recent ones into my circa 2005 card.)

My total exposure (we also have a CLOC that is unused, I am only counting credit cards) with BOA is $62,900 (~30%), and total household exposure with BOA is ~58%. May be worth noting that I am an AU on her BOA card but she is not an AU on any of my BOA cards.

So for individual cards at least, we're not really at anything staggering like 50-100% of income. I look forward to having this conversation again in a year when I've combined (and hopefully increased) my BOA cards into 1 line, and when I try for 6 digits (hopefully in 7 months if my 3x goes through this month) with my Amex SPG.

Re: Credit limit cap per vendor by income

Anonymous — Tue, 18 Jul 2017 14:14:04 GMT

@Anonymous wrote:
I could be wrong but doesnt' amount of income have something to do with this? I mean I would think it would easier to get 60k from Chase if your income was 60k than to get a million dollar credit line from chase if your annual income was 1 million dollars. Am I wrong on this?

I'm not sure! That's kind of the exciting part about this. The discussion has the capability to evolve over time, and I'm very interested to see what the answer to that question is. I've mentioned before that it is unfortunate that the investment banks where I hold assets (MS and GS) only issue cards with AMEX. I suspect that an issuer like JP Morgan would issue a card near my income at this point.

We've seen discussion about stratospheric AMEX revolving limits on the board in recent months, but I suspect most people in that income class are predominately using charge cards or other payment instruments. I know an UHNWI individual with a ~$2mm/yr salary that bought a multi-million dollar jet with a charge card and used the float to refinance it with a traditional bank loan. He probably couldn't have done THAT with a revolving credit card, but I do suspect he could have pushed for a credit line at or near his yearly salary. People with salaries of that level tend to have lots of assets and generally have a good amount of disposable income!

So, long story short: is it more likely that someone with a provable $1mm income can pay back $1mm in charges, or someone with a $60k income? I think the answer is nuanced. What is the TCO of housing for each? What is the DTI ratio? What is the asset:income ratio? I think that you're right about which would be easier to get, but I think both are possible for the right profile and a manual underwriting process.

Re: Credit limit cap per vendor by income

Anonymous — Tue, 18 Jul 2017 14:23:00 GMT

@iced wrote:
@Anonymous wrote:
I could be wrong but doesnt' amount of income have something to do with this? I mean I would think it would easier to get 60k from Chase if your income was 60k than to get a million dollar credit line from chase if your annual income was 1 million dollars. Am I wrong on this?
This. Higher percentages become more attainable as income approaches 0. I could have a $100,000 CL on a Chase card and still have a lower percentage than a student making effectively $0 with a $2500 CL card.

There are also limitations and risk factors the banks are looking at more than just simple income, and several of those factors only tend to become relevant at the higher incomes. One example of this is how some banks put a static cap on the limit of a card (such as $50000 for some CUs). A person making $1,000,000 a year will have a CL limit of 5% of his/her income, something that someone making $50,000 surpasses with a CL of $2,501.

If the goal is to see who has a card that's the largest percentage of their individual income, great. If it's to see where each bank's magic number on limits is, this approach is flawed from the start.

You're absolutely right; but the goal is actually to open discussion in a way that people may be willing to participate in. A lot of people get uncomfortable talking about salary in real numbers, but others don't mind. You'll notice that I asked the person with the highest percentages in the thread for a rough salary range. That was intentional. Others are sharing already. I know the flaws, but am far more interested in discussion than data.

I think if you poke around the edges of credit forums and the internet, you'll find that there are card products for people way in the upper tiers of income/assets. I don't know many people making $1mm a year that would be happy with a 50k cl. I would imagine most of them would not bother to keep that open and would rather seek a more flexible option.

Re: Credit limit cap per vendor by income

iced — Tue, 18 Jul 2017 14:45:52 GMT

@Anonymous wrote:
@iced wrote:
@Anonymous wrote:
I could be wrong but doesnt' amount of income have something to do with this? I mean I would think it would easier to get 60k from Chase if your income was 60k than to get a million dollar credit line from chase if your annual income was 1 million dollars. Am I wrong on this?
This. Higher percentages become more attainable as income approaches 0. I could have a $100,000 CL on a Chase card and still have a lower percentage than a student making effectively $0 with a $2500 CL card.

There are also limitations and risk factors the banks are looking at more than just simple income, and several of those factors only tend to become relevant at the higher incomes. One example of this is how some banks put a static cap on the limit of a card (such as $50000 for some CUs). A person making $1,000,000 a year will have a CL limit of 5% of his/her income, something that someone making $50,000 surpasses with a CL of $2,501.

If the goal is to see who has a card that's the largest percentage of their individual income, great. If it's to see where each bank's magic number on limits is, this approach is flawed from the start.
You're absolutely right; but the goal is actually to open discussion in a way that people may be willing to participate in. A lot of people get uncomfortable talking about salary in real numbers, but others don't mind. You'll notice that I asked the person with the highest percentages in the thread for a rough salary range. That was intentional. Others are sharing already. I know the flaws, but am far more interested in discussion than data.

I think if you poke around the edges of credit forums and the internet, you'll find that there are card products for people way in the upper tiers of income/assets. I don't know many people making $1mm a year that would be happy with a 50k cl. I would imagine most of them would not bother to keep that open and would rather seek a more flexible option.

You might be surprised with many of the millionaires. Cost of living doesn't go up with income, and those who know better than to live too extravagantly won't have problems with limits of 50-100k.

As for individual cards for me, here's my numbers:

Chase: 28%

Citi: 8%

Barclays: 4%

Re: Credit limit cap per vendor by income

MauiMan85297 — Tue, 18 Jul 2017 15:52:15 GMT

Cap1: 34%

NFCU: 29%

Discover: 3%

Re: Credit limit cap per vendor by income

Anonymous — Tue, 18 Jul 2017 15:58:55 GMT

I've typed out about

@iced wrote:
@Anonymous wrote:
@iced wrote:
@Anonymous wrote:
I could be wrong but doesnt' amount of income have something to do with this? I mean I would think it would easier to get 60k from Chase if your income was 60k than to get a million dollar credit line from chase if your annual income was 1 million dollars. Am I wrong on this?
This. Higher percentages become more attainable as income approaches 0. I could have a $100,000 CL on a Chase card and still have a lower percentage than a student making effectively $0 with a $2500 CL card.

There are also limitations and risk factors the banks are looking at more than just simple income, and several of those factors only tend to become relevant at the higher incomes. One example of this is how some banks put a static cap on the limit of a card (such as $50000 for some CUs). A person making $1,000,000 a year will have a CL limit of 5% of his/her income, something that someone making $50,000 surpasses with a CL of $2,501.

If the goal is to see who has a card that's the largest percentage of their individual income, great. If it's to see where each bank's magic number on limits is, this approach is flawed from the start.
You're absolutely right; but the goal is actually to open discussion in a way that people may be willing to participate in. A lot of people get uncomfortable talking about salary in real numbers, but others don't mind. You'll notice that I asked the person with the highest percentages in the thread for a rough salary range. That was intentional. Others are sharing already. I know the flaws, but am far more interested in discussion than data.

I think if you poke around the edges of credit forums and the internet, you'll find that there are card products for people way in the upper tiers of income/assets. I don't know many people making $1mm a year that would be happy with a 50k cl. I would imagine most of them would not bother to keep that open and would rather seek a more flexible option.
You might be surprised with many of the millionaires. Cost of living doesn't go up with income, and those who know better than to live too extravagantly won't have problems with limits of 50-100k.

As for individual cards for me, here's my numbers:

Chase: 28%
Citi: 8%
Barclays: 4%

I've typed out about 20 replies to this, but I decided to not get into an argument. I agree that there are plenty of people that became millionaires by keeping expenses very low. I am not one of them, and I know a good group of people from the UHNW spectrum on down to the $1mm asset mark that didn't get there that way either. Not knocking either approach, but the assertion that COL doesn't change with income is only true from the perspective that income is location independent. I don't believe that is true in 90% of cases.

I'd personally be happy with individual card limits of 50 to 60k, but I don't make a million dollars a year. Because my houses are paid for and retirement funded at my current income level already, I'd spend a lot more if I made a lot more. I wouldn't necessarily need a higher credit line, the only reason to grow it is to keep utilization manageable in case I feel like borrowing for some reason.