Whether it would be a good idea to charge "a lot of money" to your Chase card would depend on whether those charges are organic or not. Even with issuers like Capital One that are known to have a favorable CLI response to high usage, it's not really rational to spend a lot of money now in a way you normally wouldn't in the hopes of being able to borrow a little more at a high interest rate in the future. With Chase this is even more the case in that, so far as I can tell, the relationship between usage and CLI underwriting doesn't seem to be anywhere as simplistic as Cap1's algos. It's been a long time since I've had a low-limit Chase card, but they seem to more be a lender that gives you as much limit as they are comfortable with up front and CLIs only come down the road if and when your profile grows in such a way that they are willing to give you more.
That said, there's not a reason not to run as much of your organic spend through the Freedom as you want to, since showing usage on the card wouldn't hurt. You don't need to pay your charges down right away like a debit card, just make sure you're paying them down frequently enough not to go overlimit and that you don't let high utilization post to the bureaus. Whether you should let a balance report at all depends on whether you have another bankcard reporting and whether you need to put polish on your profile for an upcoming app. But as long as you're using and paying responsibly, charging more than your limit each month shouldn't matter; it's kind of what you have to do when you're starting out and have a low limit on your daily driver.
What is your reasoning in carrying the $198 balance on the Synch account? Ofc you're not paying any interest, so in that sense it's fine, but are you not able to pay it off? If so, I would definitely restrain spending on the Freedom so I could do that instead. Carrying a balance on the Synch, even for a relatively small amount, may not help your chances for a Chase CLI, given that your Freedom approval appears to have been borderline. More generally, what does the rest of your profile look like? You appear to have utilization under control, but if there are lates or other metrics holding your profile down, addressing those can help you look more favorable as a borrower to Chase.
It looks like youngness of overall file and the two CS negs are probably two things that held your SL down on the Freedom app. Iirc, Chase often doesn't even approve w/o a year of revolving history. I think your best path to improving your limit with Chase is just to use the card normally and pay responsibly while you let your accounts gain age and your negs age off.
@Anonymous wrote:
@Slabenstein wrote:It looks like youngness of overall file and the two CS negs are probably two things that held your SL down on the Freedom app. Iirc, Chase often doesn't even approve w/o a year of revolving history. I think your best path to improving your limit with Chase is just to use the card normally and pay responsibly while you let your accounts gain age and your negs age off.
Thanks for the info. So I'm not spending more than I normally would, I am simply charging it to a CC instead of paying with debit. My thinking behind leaving the balance on synchrony is to let something report since there is a balance on there, instead of paying it off and then having a different card report a balance. Since it's at a managble number and under 8% for my total, but about 18% for that specific card, would it be a good idea to get that @
Ah, so it's meant as an AZEO anchor (and, I presume, to avoid the AZ penalty whenever your Chase balance zeroes out). Those util numbers are good for that, but your balance-reporting card should be a bankcard to avoid penalties across all bureaus. Is this a store card account or a full Synch bankcard?