@Dervrak wrote:
I must admit being relatively new to the boards this is the first I've heard of "balance chasing". The great mystery of credit card companies I guess, they give you these huge credit limits then punish you when you actually take advantage of them. I can see how it would be incredbly frustrating, you reduce your utilization, they reduce your limit thereby tanking your utilization and putting you back to square one.
My question is. Is there a set utilization where banks start "balance chasing". In my line of work I will often use my cards for business expenses, then pay them off as soon as the contract ends. I've had ultilization as high as 65% with no issues in the past (it's currently down around 10% so no worries at present). But I'm now concerned that I might be better off taking out a bank loan during my next contract (which kind of defeats the purpose of having the credit cards in the first place).
In my experience, banks give you large limits with the expectation, that you won't use it all, normal spend should be 1-9% on less than 10% of your cards, this also happens to give the best credit score, all zero except 1 with 1-9% showing. If your traveling or have other suprised expenses, carying 30% UTL on 30% of your cards won't hurt your score too much, but maxing-out (over 85% used) even 1 card can be seen as dangerous depending on the lender and your credit history multiple cards may send your other creditors over the line. Best to make large payments, and get the situation undercontrol before it snowballs, high interest as your credit score goes down, and you are certainly in balance chasing territory with 3 or more cards over 85% UTL.
The OP here should of tried growing limits on his cards even if it of would resulted in a HP or 2 to get some breathing room on his cards before he purchased a house using credit cards. Home Depot card should of been easy to get CLI upto 10k or so if you mention you will be doing a remodel. Perhaps a Lowes card could of been added to his wallet, either to grow to 10 or even 25k with a quick phone call, maybe an Amazon store card can be another great utilization padding card, 5-10k aren't hard to get. Of course all this is hindsight who knows if it would of helped or not.
Cards: Chase Southwest 20k & CSR 17k & CSP 10k & FNBO 30k Oregon Duck 5k, & AMEX BCP 32.5k & Amex Magnet 15k&amg; Hilton Surpass 7.5k & Delta Gold 12k & Zync NPSL, Fidelity AMEX 17k Commerce5.9k & Cash Forward 7.5k & Sams Club MC 20k, Paypal Extras MC 10k, Paypal Credit 7.25k CapOne Venture 15k, QS 2.5k, QS 750, Amazon 10k, Walmart 10k, Citi Simplicity 18k, Discover IT 23k and a nice stack of store cards.
Landmarkcu Personal Loan 10k
