@Saleen099 wrote:
@K-in-Boston wrote:I know you gave the disclaimer of heavy spend but in my case, even that hasn't really helped with Amex. I am at $90,500 total and haven't had a CLI in years (although I did have a few business cards approved for $10k each with no reallocation once they cut the tap off). My personal Amex spend is slightly more than that annually that except for a year or two where I may have dipped down into the $85k-95k range while chasing SUBs elsewhere. For a few years I seemed to have been stuck around 15-20% of income. Back when SPG card was king, I was even running over my credit line every month because monthly spend between statement close and due date combined with statement balance was hindering me. Meanwhile I know there were plenty of people with modest incomes getting fairly close to their annual income with Amex. It doesn't seem to scale. What I spend on and how I spend has changed quite a bit so thankfully the limits are fine for me. But I'd still like to hit $100k with Amex someday just because I set it as a goal about 7 years ago. 😂
With Chase I am at $49,500 and don't foresee moving up. They don't get that much spend, so I am okay with that, but they seem to have turned off the tap for me at a fairly low %.
@K-in-Boston You made a mistake it should say 149K with Chase.
If you could talk to JPM on my behalf it would be greatly appreciated. I'll take it on a Ritz-Carlton. 😉
I have yet to hit $100k with anyone. BoA infamously cut me off $100 shy.
@K-in-Boston wrote:
@Saleen099 wrote:
@K-in-Boston wrote:I know you gave the disclaimer of heavy spend but in my case, even that hasn't really helped with Amex. I am at $90,500 total and haven't had a CLI in years (although I did have a few business cards approved for $10k each with no reallocation once they cut the tap off). My personal Amex spend is slightly more than that annually that except for a year or two where I may have dipped down into the $85k-95k range while chasing SUBs elsewhere. For a few years I seemed to have been stuck around 15-20% of income. Back when SPG card was king, I was even running over my credit line every month because monthly spend between statement close and due date combined with statement balance was hindering me. Meanwhile I know there were plenty of people with modest incomes getting fairly close to their annual income with Amex. It doesn't seem to scale. What I spend on and how I spend has changed quite a bit so thankfully the limits are fine for me. But I'd still like to hit $100k with Amex someday just because I set it as a goal about 7 years ago. 😂
With Chase I am at $49,500 and don't foresee moving up. They don't get that much spend, so I am okay with that, but they seem to have turned off the tap for me at a fairly low %.
@K-in-Boston You made a mistake it should say 149K with Chase.
If you could talk to JPM on my behalf it would be greatly appreciated. I'll take it on a Ritz-Carlton. 😉
I have yet to hit $100k with anyone. BoA infamously cut me off $100 shy.
I had 100k TCL with BoA over 5 accounts, 2 personal and 3 business. Then one day they closed all of my personal accounts for the reason, supposedly, that I had enough credit. Then they closed all of my business accounts for the reason that they had closed my personal accounts. In about 2 days, my 100k TCL with BoA went to zero. Not pleasant.
@CreditCuriosity wrote:Chase is generally 40-50% of income from what I have seen historically.
That's what I've seen and heard reported too, @CreditCuriosity but it seems it depends.
As @coldfusion commented in this link, the 50% is more typical for modest income combined with pristine payment history. I agree with that.
I was in the 40%-range, then upper 30%-range, now about 30%-range. As my income has risen, my CL to income ratio hasn't completely kept up. This is with 800+ FICOs, thick file, long Chase relationship (23+ years), multiple cards, deposit accounts. My guess is to keep that 40% to 50% ratio, you'd have to be using a lot of the credit already allocated to you (which I admit I'm not) or be high wealth with Private Client or Private Banking.
When they reallocated my credit limits, they sent me a letter disclosing it and told me the decision was based on:
- You already have the maximum amount of credit we can offer you.
- Your current amount of credit is enough in relation to your income.
@fury1995 wrote:This is FANTASTIC information!
You're are ahead of me on the same track I've been trying to go down.
I haven't seen many folks with these kind of data points that closely matches my profile (and intentions) so... I guess you have a new myFico stalker as now I have to go find every thread you've started and read them thoroughly.
Super Kudos!!
Thanks @fury1995. Always good to gain a new stalker. lol 
@K-in-Boston wrote:I know you gave the disclaimer of heavy spend but in my case, even that hasn't really helped with Amex. I am at $90,500 total and haven't had a CLI in years (although I did have a few business cards approved for $10k each with no reallocation once they cut the tap off). My personal Amex spend is slightly more than that annually that except for a year or two where I may have dipped down into the $85k-95k range while chasing SUBs elsewhere. For a few years I seemed to have been stuck around 15-20% of income. Back when SPG card was king, I was even running over my credit line every month because monthly spend between statement close and due date combined with statement balance was hindering me. Meanwhile I know there were plenty of people with modest incomes getting fairly close to their annual income with Amex. It doesn't seem to scale. What I spend on and how I spend has changed quite a bit so thankfully the limits are fine for me. But I'd still like to hit $100k with Amex someday just because I set it as a goal about 7 years ago. 😂
With Chase I am at $49,500 and don't foresee moving up. They don't get that much spend, so I am okay with that, but they seem to have turned off the tap for me at a fairly low %.
Thanks for those data points, @K-in-Boston. They are very interesting to me since I know you're a heavy AMEX spender. My experience combined with what I'm reading in the thread is that AMEX appears have most members capped at $75K to $95K on revolvers. And income and spend doesn't seem to sway it much, unless we're getting to super-high utilization or incomes.
With AMEX, that 15% to 20% of income might be onto something, as I think mine correlates. So perhaps, 15% to 20% of income up to the point of reaching whatever that 75K+ cap is between revolvers, then leveling off similar to what I've seen with my Chase limits or Bank of America limits. (IF) I were to have more invested with either bank or high spend, I imagine they could increase but without those factors, I'm probably at maximum exposure.
Good luck on your AMEX $100K quest!
Your low Chase exposure caught my attention also and it makes me wonder if someone has a lot of AMEX cards if that somehow dissuades Chase from offering more due to the rivalry between those two?? Just a thought. I got my high Chase limits while I didn't have any AMEX cards.
@NoHardLimits wrote:I have some data points to contribute which seem to corroborate the other comments in this thread.
For Chase, my maximum TCL hit $137k before having to reallocate for a new card. At that time, the TCL was approximately 45% of household income. The breakdown between personal and business lines was $127k and $10k.
For Amex, my maximum TCL hit $76k before having to reallocate for a new card. At that time, the TCL was approximately 39% of household income. The breakdown between personal and business lines was $58k and $18k.
Thanks, @NoHardLimits for those data points. I believe your profile and TCL has been part of my reason for thinking there might be something to that $135K to $145K number with Chase.
@nytokyobred79 wrote:
- From my own personal experience, Chase has been more willing to increase my TCL regardless of overall spending patterns vs Amex ( all things else equal such as profile and overall income).
- The interesting result is that while Amex is not willing to extend any further CLI requests based on overall spending patterns across my cards, Chase was willing to extend me an additional 32.4K last month with only a fraction of the spend compared to Amex.
- My total income has increased around 11-12% from a year ago but it seems that only Chase is being influenced by that.
- Regardless, it's very interesting to see how these two lenders differ extending to each unique profile.
Those comments are all spot-on from my experience with these two, @nytokyobred79.
AMEX pushes to get all your spend; Chase wants it too, but can be generous without it. And overall, Chase seems more generous with TCL than AMEX overall. I contribute this to the different business model, where American Express National Bank doesn't have nearly the assets backing their lending as the "Big Five" banks (Chase, Bank of America, Wells Fargo, CITI, US Bank.) They are the only lender with a big charge card presence instead of credit cards. This explains a lot about AMEX, including how they seem extra attentive to credit report changes, rewards abuse, and the lower revolving credit limits. Revolvers are also known to get their strictest underwriting, and that's for a reason. They'd much prefer with their business model to get paid back monthly on charge card spend than to float debt for customers. And while they've gotten into the credit end of the business in the past 25 years, they are very cautious about how they handle it. (And yes, it's only been about 25 years since AMEX introduced its' first revolver, the (original) "Optima" card. (Not the one offered now.)
