topic Re: Credit limit boosting experiment: CLI from $1000-$25000 in Rebuilding Your Credit

Credit limit boosting experiment: CLI from $1000-$25000

visualfxpro — Mon, 13 Dec 2021 22:39:43 GMT

I'm doing an experiment to see if I can trigger aggressive limit increases by talking to the credit card company algos. The basic idea is to use your card in a way which would suggest that a MUCH higher limit is NEEDED & that the card holder has the means and ability to handle it responsibly.

In short, I will try to spend my limit or more, every month and carry $0 balance. For example, with $1000 limit card:

Begin billing cycle
Charge $1000

Pay $1000

Charge $1000

Pay $1000
End billing cycle

Report $0 balance

repeat

Now this is purely experminental. I have no idea if this will work or not and this can be VERY risky IF you don't space your charges far enough away from the end of your billing and get reported to credit agencies.

So I've picked my smallest limit card which is due for an increase. It's a $500 Wells Fargo card that has been VERY lightly used. Most months I don't even use it. To max it out, I've cancelled one of my bill payment and moved it to this card AND paid for an additional month. Then I paid my internet early plus some of the month after that to fully max the card. I'm expecting the charge to report tomorrow at which time, I'll pay it off. Then I'll see if I can find another $500 to charge on it and pay again.

I've found a service to pay my rent on credit card. I'll used that to further boost some of my other cards.

If this works, I might try some further experiments to find out if for example, charging more than your limit helps at all, or is their no benifit beyond the limit. I expect it's unusual for a person to use their card like this, going over limit, so might not be factored into their programming.

The logic is, their software needs to predict your spending and ability to pay. If you spend no more than $10 a month, there is no way you get a high limit. If you are hitting the limit a lot, that should send a gold mine signal to them as a big spender. Paying right away shows your ability and willingness to pay. You are basically creating a time machine of sorts. If you charge $2000 on a $1000 limit card in a month and carry no balance, you have basically gone into the future where you have a $2000 limit card and you are doing really well. You are also demostrating that $2000 limit is FAR too low. A person like that needs maybe a $5000 limit.

Wish me luck! Any questions or comments let me know.

Another idea I have is I can REALLY supercharge this if I were to say open an Amazon or Ebay seller account. For example, I could buy $3000 worth of stuff on credit card, then sell the items to get the cash back, hopefully at a profit if I can chose the right items. Seems like a lot, but I'm a nerd and I'm interesting in getting into business anyway. I just want to buy and sell something. Get my feet wet, then go from there. So kill two birds with one stone!

Score jumped to 717 now BTW. FACO I guess. Experian is at 645.

Re: Credit limit boosting experiment: CLI from $1000-$25000

FireMedic1 — Mon, 13 Dec 2021 22:48:11 GMT

Looks good. But each lender is either stingy or willing to give. Depends on past history also. You can try it and call and ask you need more of a CL to meet your spend after you've tried your experiment for a while. Best of luck either way.

Re: Credit limit boosting experiment: CLI from $1000-$25000

Ilinferno — Mon, 13 Dec 2021 23:54:11 GMT

Good luck! Let us know how it goes.

Re: Credit limit boosting experiment: CLI from $1000-$25000

NYC_Fella — Tue, 14 Dec 2021 01:00:33 GMT

I don't think it will work, except with cards that like to see a lot of usage before granting a CLI. Discover and Apple are notorious. IMO most bank cards won't view it as a positive or a negative.

Re: Credit limit boosting experiment: CLI from $1000-$25000

Gunnerboy — Tue, 14 Dec 2021 01:14:45 GMT

You're basically cycling your limit. Members have done this out of necessity on their cards that were given "toy" limits.

Re: Credit limit boosting experiment: CLI from $1000-$25000

visualfxpro — Tue, 14 Dec 2021 01:35:06 GMT

Absolutely. I'll make this my journal and post any progress here. I'm excited to see if this actually works. One variable that I need to consider is time. Their software might factor in time. Logic could be, ideal limit equals average total charges for a month for x amount of months. So doing this for 2 months, might not do much if you have not used the card for 8 months before.

Re: Credit limit boosting experiment: CLI from $1000-$25000

visualfxpro — Tue, 14 Dec 2021 01:38:14 GMT

@Gunnerboy wrote:
You're basically cycling your limit. Members have done this out of necessity on their cards that were given "toy" limits.

Well a lot of factors to consider including the bank. If this works, it might only work with one company or 3 or any number. So for one person, it might work and for another it might not. Also the math would be looking at a ton of other variables, any of which could invalidate the effects of this. Like maybe they have a huge weight for income, that cancels out the effect based on your income not being enough.

Re: Credit limit boosting experiment: CLI from $1000-$25000

Brian_Earl_Spilner — Tue, 14 Dec 2021 12:46:38 GMT

It works for cap1, or at least did, before they started capping the increases to $100 for toy limits. Amex doesn't mind and I was doing it for 2 years, but until one has a clean profile, it doesn't really help. There are other lenders where this is extremely frowned upon and can lead to AA such as account closure. I'd research a lender and limit cycling before attempting it with them

Re: Credit limit boosting experiment: CLI from $1000-$25000

visualfxpro — Tue, 14 Dec 2021 17:49:50 GMT

@Brian_Earl_Spilner wrote:
It works for cap1, or at least did, before they started capping the increases to $100 for toy limits. Amex doesn't mind and I was doing it for 2 years, but until one has a clean profile, it doesn't really help. There are other lenders where this is extremely frowned upon and can lead to AA such as account closure. I'd research a lender and limit cycling before attempting it with them

Interesting. Where have you seen that this is frowned upon? Would love to learn more.

Cap1 is my next target but I need to wait for statement closing date.

BTW WF is SLOW!! They STILL have not reported my charges from 2 days ago in their app or online. I can't pay it until they do.

Re: Credit limit boosting experiment: CLI from $1000-$25000

Nikita2008 — Wed, 15 Dec 2021 05:42:46 GMT

Not sure I agree with the logic here. I put a high spend on a Discover card, no CLI at all ( don't care by the way). I currently have a 9k limit with them

I have 2 cards with Navy, they are fairly lightly used in comparison to credit limits and saw 4-5K CLI's on both.

But good luck.

Re: Credit limit boosting experiment: CLI from $1000-$25000

Nikita2008 — Wed, 15 Dec 2021 05:48:47 GMT

Oh and by the way I'm a former eBay power seller. I would not buy 3k in inventory simply to get your feet wet.

There are a lot of variables to online selling regardless of the platform, and eBay or any other platform can without warning shut your account down for just about any reason or no reason- leaving you with that inventory. If you are an inexperienced seller they will generally place selling limits on your account- which causes your inventory to turn slower.

If you are looking to "get your feet wet" start small.

Re: Credit limit boosting experiment: CLI from $1000-$25000

visualfxpro — Wed, 15 Dec 2021 16:33:08 GMT

Thanks for the tips!

@Nikita2008 wrote:
Oh and by the way I'm a former eBay power seller. I would not buy 3k in inventory simply to get your feet wet.

There are a lot of variables to online selling regardless of the platform, and eBay or any other platform can without warning shut your account down for just about any reason or no reason- leaving you with that inventory. If you are an inexperienced seller they will generally place selling limits on your account- which causes your inventory to turn slower.

If you are looking to "get your feet wet" start small.

Re: Credit limit boosting experiment: CLI from $1000-$25000

visualfxpro — Fri, 17 Dec 2021 13:12:16 GMT

So I just maxed and paid my WF card. Now I'm targetting TD Bank. They said credit increase request is hard pull BTW. TD is $1k. Going to use that to pay of my charge off. Might be $4000, so I'll need to use a few cards, but I can max out my TD card easy. Plus I'll start paying my rent with my credit cards using Plastiq.

So I'll need to be careful about going over the limit. Some companies frown on this. There are money laundering concerns. So this means smaller limit cards might be safer for this but once you start heading up to $10k, you might be flagged. In general it means you need to keep things lookingi as organic as possible, knowing that software is tracking you and looking for patterns to flag. Like it might be good to use the $500 limit card exactly as I do my $3k card, just pay off right away. This means real charges that make sense.

Re: Credit limit boosting experiment: CLI from $1000-$25000

OmarGB9 — Fri, 17 Dec 2021 13:12:45 GMT

@visualfxpro wrote:
So I just maxed and paid my WF card. Now I'm targetting TD Bank. They said credit increase request is hard pull BTW. TD is $1k. Going to use that to pay of my charge off. Might be $4000, so I'll need to use a few cards, but I can max out my TD card easy. Plus I'll start paying my rent with my credit cards using Plastiq.

So I'll need to be careful about going over the limit. Some companies frown on this. There are money laundering concerns. So this means smaller limit cards might be safer for this but once you start heading up to $10k, you might be flagged. In general it means you need to keep things lookingi as organic as possible, knowing that software is tracking you and looking for patterns to flag. Like it might be good to use the $500 limit card exactly as I do my $3k card, just pay off right away. This means real charges that make sense.

I would highly encourage you to NOT "ask sebby" and instead ask any and all credit questions here, and follow the advice on here.

Also keep in mind, if you use services such as Plastiq, well for one, the purchase may not code as a purchase at all, but rather a cash advance. Secondly, the fees you're racking up will outweigh any potential rewards and simply cost a lot more in the long run.

Re: Credit limit boosting experiment: CLI from $1000-$25000

visualfxpro — Fri, 17 Dec 2021 21:48:15 GMT

@Nikita2008 wrote:
Not sure I agree with the logic here. I put a high spend on a Discover card, no CLI at all ( don't care by the way). I currently have a 9k limit with them

I have 2 cards with Navy, they are fairly lightly used in comparison to credit limits and saw 4-5K CLI's on both.

But good luck.

Well I would not expect that to do anything. What I'm trying to tap into is their CLI algorithim that is run whenever they try to determine a limit for you. This would happen after periodic review is made and the activity triggers a CLI attempt. Then that would probably call some programming function that has the job of calculating what the new limit will be. Perhaps it does it's own analysis or uses the data from the reiview. Either way, it needs a mathamatical formula to come up with a number. I'm betting the math takes into account the amount of your limit you use. For example, if you only spend $5 on a card with $5000 limit, I doubt they will every increase your credit. Nothing about your account would indicate any benifit of doing that.

That being said, I'm making all guesses here of course. A bank can use a rigid system that is basically pass/fail. So limits could be preset to:

$1000
$5000
$10000

In this case, math is not used to come up with numbers and if you can't skip levels, your spending won't matter beyond pass/fail threshold. Let's say to get to next level $5000, you must:

Credit score > 650=Y
Average spend>$500

So either you meet these variables or you don't. If you do, you get $5k. So a guy spending $500/mo and a guy cycling through $100k a month, both get $5k. In this case, the best you can do is climb the ladder faster. If you meet the top threshold from day one, then first review you get $5k and if they do a bianual review, you would have $10k in a year. The guy who only spend $500 for that year, might take 2 years because since he does not meet the next level threshold of spend > $1000, he needs to wait for score to pass 700(for example).

One thing is for sure. Spending more per month is more likely to help with credit limit increases, than not. It's also feasible that there is at least one bank that reacts very aggresivly to this.

One thing is for sure! I will be sharing my results with the forum!

Re: Credit limit boosting experiment: CLI from $1000-$25000

OmarGB9 — Fri, 17 Dec 2021 23:38:15 GMT

@visualfxpro wrote:
@Nikita2008 wrote:
Not sure I agree with the logic here. I put a high spend on a Discover card, no CLI at all ( don't care by the way). I currently have a 9k limit with them

I have 2 cards with Navy, they are fairly lightly used in comparison to credit limits and saw 4-5K CLI's on both.

But good luck.
Well I would not expect that to do anything. What I'm trying to tap into is their CLI algorithim that is run whenever they try to determine a limit for you. This would happen after periodic review is made and the activity triggers a CLI attempt. Then that would probably call some programming function that has the job of calculating what the new limit will be. Perhaps it does it's own analysis or uses the data from the reiview. Either way, it needs a mathamatical formula to come up with a number. I'm betting the math takes into account the amount of your limit you use. For example, if you only spend $5 on a card with $5000 limit, I doubt they will every increase your credit. Nothing about your account would indicate any benifit of doing that.

That being said, I'm making all guesses here of course. A bank can use a rigid system that is basically pass/fail. So limits could be preset to:

$1000
$5000
$10000

In this case, math is not used to come up with numbers and if you can't skip levels, your spending won't matter beyond pass/fail threshold. Let's say to get to next level $5000, you must:

Credit score > 650=Y
Average spend>$500

So either you meet these variables or you don't. If you do, you get $5k. So a guy spending $500/mo and a guy cycling through $100k a month, both get $5k. In this case, the best you can do is climb the ladder faster. If you meet the top threshold from day one, then first review you get $5k and if they do a bianual review, you would have $10k in a year. The guy who only spend $500 for that year, might take 2 years because since he does not meet the next level threshold of spend > $1000, he needs to wait for score to pass 700(for example).

One thing is for sure. Spending more per month is more likely to help with credit limit increases, than not. It's also feasible that there is at least one bank that reacts very aggresivly to this.

One thing is for sure! I will be sharing my results with the forum!

Please do share your results, but honestly, trying to reverse engineer a bank's CLI algorithm is an impossible task.

And, I don't think it's nearly as black and white as you are making it out to be. There are so many more variables involved besides average spend and current score. DTI, balances on other revolving accounts, amount of debt, time since last CLI, income, current economic conditions, etc. just to name a few. Not to mention I'm sure they're constantly or often updating or tweaking said algorithm, so even if by some miracle you were to figure it out one day, it could be very different by the next day.

Re: Credit limit boosting experiment: CLI from $1000-$25000

pakratus — Sat, 18 Dec 2021 20:37:24 GMT

I'm looking forward to see the results.

Let me offer something to consider and/or test- The number of transactions may also be a factor. One charge of $1000 may not look as good as one thousand $1 charges.

Tangential examples

A youtube "tip" for Apple Card CLIs is to make at least 20 transactions in a month.

I think Amex has or had a 25% points increase bonus, if you make 30 transactions in a month.

Re: Credit limit boosting experiment: CLI from $1000-$25000

FireMedic1 — Sat, 18 Dec 2021 21:43:53 GMT

@visualfxpro wrote:
So I just maxed and paid my WF card. Now I'm targetting TD Bank. They said credit increase request is hard pull BTW. TD is $1k. Going to use that to pay of my charge off. Might be $4000, so I'll need to use a few cards, but I can max out my TD card easy. Plus I'll start paying my rent with my credit cards using Plastiq.

So I'll need to be careful about going over the limit. Some companies frown on this. There are money laundering concerns. So this means smaller limit cards might be safer for this but once you start heading up to $10k, you might be flagged. In general it means you need to keep things lookingi as organic as possible, knowing that software is tracking you and looking for patterns to flag. Like it might be good to use the $500 limit card exactly as I do my $3k card, just pay off right away. This means real charges that make sense.

And this might be a problem with what your trying to complete. They may be skiddish with CLI's knowing you already had a CO and they dont want to have it happen to them. Especially since its going to be settled soon. This might be why also your starting CL's are where they're at for credit you got after the CO posted.

Re: Credit limit boosting experiment: CLI from $1000-$25000

Lou-natic — Sun, 19 Dec 2021 23:12:25 GMT

@pakratus wrote:
I'm looking forward to see the results.

Let me offer something to consider and/or test- The number of transactions may also be a factor. One charge of $1000 may not look as good as one thousand $1 charges.

Tangential examples
A youtube "tip" for Apple Card CLIs is to make at least 20 transactions in a month.
I think Amex has or had a 25% points increase bonus, if you make 30 transactions in a month.

Yeah, people think amounts matter but the banks make money on swipe fees and interest. Paying in full might look good on your credit report but doesn't make the bank money. Same with infrequent large purchases. They make far more money if you swipe for small amounts a bunch of times. If you make the bank more money they tend to loosen the purse strings a bit.

"The real sweet spot, and the most profitable for the card issuers, is if consumers carry debt month-to-month as they pay the banks back. All the outstanding balances are not good for the banks if they have to write them off, or if consumers continue to pay balances in full every month, but if consumers are making minimum payments it provides banks the interest month after month that is the most profitable way for them to get paid back."

https://www.cnbc.com/2021/07/30/covid-consumers-did-great-job-paying-credit-card-debt-it-cant-last.html

Re: Credit limit boosting experiment: CLI from $1000-$25000

visualfxpro — Tue, 21 Dec 2021 22:40:02 GMT

@pakratus wrote:
I'm looking forward to see the results.

Tangential examples
A youtube "tip" for Apple Card CLIs is to make at least 20 transactions in a month.
I think Amex has or had a 25% points increase bonus, if you make 30 transactions in a month.

Interesting! Thanks for sharing. I had not considered that. Most of their money comes from fees. A big spender is a good potential fee monster. You can keep giving them larger and larger limits until they go a little too far and start carrying balances. With 10k CL, you can carry $1k without too much damage to credit and they can make money from that. A person who is a light spender does not seem very profitable. They are not likely to not be able to pay their balances and they will likely ignore credit limit increases.

Then again I was a light spender and they DID keep increasing my limit until one day I decided to tap into that limit for a Europe trip, then came home and MAYBE carried some for a month or two, then paid it all off, then lost my job, then started digging right back into my credit with no money coming in. However that eneded up being a charge off eventually.

Transaction fees are another profit center, so I could tap into that also.

Just found out I can pay rent with credit card too. WISH I knew this before! That is a big charge EVERY month, plug my other bills.