topic Re: BOA secured card - CL increase in Credit Cards

BOA secured card - CL increase

Anonymous — Mon, 23 Oct 2017 15:13:39 GMT

This morning, I was messing around using the CreditWise simulator, which should obviously be taken with 8 grains of salt.. But..

I currently have a secured card, which was opened in May. Limit is 500, and I was going to pledge more money to them to make it an even 2000, so that way whenever they decide to make it unsecured, I get my money back and have a higher limit. My TU score on there is currently 713. This move would jump it up to 725. Seems normal to me. Except, I start messing around with different values.

It tells me that if I raise my limit just to 600, my score could jump to 729. A larger difference for less money. This doesn't seem correct to me, for a huge number of logical reasons. Having the higher limit is my obvious preference, however, I am now curious to the legitimacy of that simulation, and if so.. I would love for someone to explain why.

Re: BOA secured card - CL increase

K-in-Boston — Mon, 23 Oct 2017 15:39:00 GMT

Because the simulators don't actually compile your score using proprietary FICO methods, none of them will be completely accurate and there are certainly some "quirks" that you'll see that are just plain wrong (like paying down to 12% overall utilization will give you a better score than paying down to 5%). In the case of CreditWise, that's a Vantage 3.0 score to begin with, so any changes in that are not going to necessarily apply to actual FICO scores that are used by nearly all lenders. As an example, by reducing my overall utilization from 80-90% a few years ago down to below the 30% mark, my FICO scores went from being right at 700 to on average being in the 735-745 range which is good enough to qualify for pretty much anything I want. My Vantage 3.0 scores however have gone down to around the 630s, and sites like CreditWise and Credit Karma consider me to have fair credit, so perhaps I might be interested in a subprime lender.

Does BOA give you a free FICO 08 TransUnion score each month with a secured card? If you're in the 700s, you should have no issues getting an unsecured card from them. To answer your question, though, any amount you can reduce your overall utilization (as long as it's not zero, which hurts) is going to help your score provided there are no other factors driving it down as a result (i.e. opening a new account).

Re: BOA secured card - CL increase

Anonymous — Mon, 23 Oct 2017 16:36:28 GMT

They do! I bank with them, and I'm not positive, but they may have furnished me with it even when I didn't have the card.

My FICO score through TU with them, shows at 692, and that's been a thorn in my side. It has been sitting there for the last few months, with no movement. I was hoping that by increasing my limit with them, that I could see a jump to over 700.

I keep the card under 10% utilization.

I guess I'm just curious as to how much it will take to get it done. Also, if I do put more money towards it, would that also count as a hard inquiry, or simply just a CL increase? Asking for the increase on my own, or having the card unsecured I'm sure would work in my favor, but I wanted to force their hand with my credit limit. So if I do open cards in the future, after I purchase a house, my limit will be 2k, let's say, so other CC's would be more likely to extend me the same, or more.