Credit Limit too high?

[Anonymous]

Hi everybody, Newbie here.  I have received some letters from credit cards saying they increased my CL to pretty high amounts, $16k, $20k, that sort of thing.  I do use credit cards for anything I can, but usually a few thousand on one or two of them, and I always pay off at the due date.  I have excellent credit.  I am wondring if there is a negative to asking them to decrease my CL, or if it's something I should even worry about.  

I have around 10 good credit cards (Visa, AmEx, Discover, MC) and a few retail cards.  Are they just waiting for me to screw up?  Would love to hear your thoughts.  TIA!

[BronzeTrader]

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@Anonymous wrote:

Hi everybody, Newbie here.  I have received some letters from credit cards saying they increased my CL to pretty high amounts, $16k, $20k, that sort of thing.  I do use credit cards for anything I can, but usually a few thousand on one or two of them, and I always pay off at the due date.  I have excellent credit.  I am wondring if there is a negative to asking them to decrease my CL, or if it's something I should even worry about.  

I have around 10 good credit cards (Visa, AmEx, Discover, MC) and a few retail cards.  Are they just waiting for me to screw up?  Would love to hear your thoughts.  TIA!

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I asked to decrease my credit lines all time.  This way I can limit my own exposure to certain bank and keep my credit relationship with them open.  Almost no bank wanst to keep a $100,000 or $200,000 credit line open with one single person or family.  Over the past year, I've closed or decrease my total credit line $200,000.

I had a Crate & Barrel card from Comenity, which had a credit line of $20,000.    I'll never buy that much dinnerware.  

[HeavenOhio]

I think you're fine, especially if the banks are initiating the increases.

[Anonymous]

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@HeavenOhio wrote:

I think you're fine, especially if the banks are initiating the increases.

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Plus 1 on that.  

[Creditaddict]

I personally would never decrease CL with a bank unless I needed to move some for a different product within the same bank but just to reduce because you don't currently need it.. no... it's easy to get credit when you don't need it so I say keep it in case something changes!

[Chickenpotpie]

OP I don't think its them waiting for you to screw up, they're rewarding you for a job well done!    I limit the cards I have (I have 4) and most of my increases were organic, sans 2.   I've gotten all the credit I need on them.

A bit more credit helps utilization.  so if you're scores are good and you're using maybe 1-5% of your total credit, additional padding just helps keep the scores higher.

No matter how much you have, rule of thumb is never use more than you can afford, and if you spend it,  and if you spend it, you sure as heck have to pay it back!

If you feel its too much temptation, or it makes you uncomfortable, ask for a decrease.

[JR_TX]

Hi pchbuttercup and Welcome to the myFICO community!

Have you checked your FICO8s lately?

The reason I ask is just because you pay in full your credit cards at the due date doesn't always equate to $0 balance reported by your lenders, hence, doesn't always equate to a low utilization which impacts your credit score greatly. Each bank has different dates for when they report monthly and a lot of them reports the amount you owe on their statement cutting or posting date. This is important to your query as with your habit you don't want to decrease your CL as it will lessen your cushion as far as utilization goes. Unless you want to micro-manage your credit card accounting, you want to have as much padding as possible. So to answer your question, No don't ask for a CLD and just let them be especially if they're lender initiated or auto cli.

Hope this helps.

[noobody]

just called US Bank, reduced my Cash+ CL by 50% (more than enough for a capped card), and Club Carlson by 95% (always have bad experience with chain, Just charge once a while to keep the points live, will close after burnt all the points).
I don't like unnecessary CL, it is waste lender's resource, make me uncomfortable if individual card CL is several times more than i need.
Overall utility is never a concern.

[Glen_M]

The only thing I see wrong with having lots of high CL is that some lenders will take your total potential debt and potential debt to income ratio into consideration when you apply for a new credit product.  

This seems more likely for products where a human is going to do the review for underwriting, and maybe the market or something in your credit history isn't so rosy.

[UpperNwGuy]

When I first joined this forum, I was surprised by the relentless zeal with which some members were seeking increases to their credit limits.  Realistically, if you pay off your charges each month, you don't need extremely high credit limits.  In my case, unless it is Christmas or a vacation month, my monthly throughput on credit cards is about $2,000.  To maintain a utilization rate of less than 10%, the most credit I should need is $25,000.  Even with a buffer for Christmas and vacation months, the most credit I should need is $50,000. However, I have over $100,000 in credit limit distributed across seven cards.  It's frankly more than I need.  Yet I keep reading about folk who have combined credit limits of $200,000 or $300,000 and are seeking further increases.  I'm not sure what their objective is other than the satisfaction of knowing that banks trust them with high credit limits.