How to get a larger credit limit?

[tehdrizzle]

I'm baffled af how so many people have 10, 20, 30, or even 40k credit limits on their cards.

I'm 39, make 185k per year, have a mortgage and auto loan totalling $1500 per month between the two. I have 8 credit cards which I use every month and pay in full. My scores are 840 with EQ, 840 with TU, and 850 with EX. I have zero inquiries as well.

Every time I have requested a CLI it's only for $300-$500. My highest is 21k with Lowes, but I cannot get Capital One, Discover, Citi, or anyone else to give me a larger bump. What's the secret? I'd love to have fewer cards with larger limits, but unfortunately have several with $500 - $3000 limits except for the Lowes and Home Depot cards.

Even Amex kept me at 1k since 2013 until last year when they bumped me to 3k.

I appreciate any help you all can provide!

[Patient957]

I'm surprised you're having any issues with your profile. 

My bet is once things start flowing for you, everyone will offer you higher limits.  Maybe go for an Amex credit card, like BCE or BCP, and ride the 3x CLI every 90 days wave.  That should get you to 30K+ pretty quickly.  Others will likely follow from there.

[GZG]

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@tehdrizzle wrote:

I'm baffled af how so many people have 10, 20, 30, or even 40k credit limits on their cards.

I'm 39, make 185k per year, have a mortgage and auto loan totalling $1500 per month between the two. I have 8 credit cards which I use every month and pay in full. My scores are 840 with EQ, 840 with TU, and 850 with EX. I have zero inquiries as well.

Every time I have requested a CLI it's only for $300-$500. My highest is 21k with Lowes, but I cannot get Capital One, Discover, Citi, or anyone else to give me a larger bump. What's the secret? I'd love to have fewer cards with larger limits, but unfortunately have several with $500 - $3000 limits except for the Lowes and Home Depot cards.

I appreciate any help you all can provide!

---

the answer is American Express (or navy fed)

get an amex card, they will give you far higher than a CL than you will ever need (either immediately or in 90 day CLI increments), and then you can leverage that limit in future apps with different banks so you can get other high limits in the future

discover won't increase without spend, capital one you're probably bucketed so it doesn't matter how much you spend, with citi you're probably at your max limit with them because of home depot

you need high limit bank tradelines and not retail (crap) like synchrony/Citi retail, banks when you apply for CLIs and other cards will look at your comparable bank limits with major banks and decide your limit on there, they will put far less weight on the 'retail' cards like synchrony and home depot

if you want to list out all of your cards, there's no reason for you to keep $500 limit cards, might be time to close some of them 

[NoHardLimits]

How long ago were you approved for your current cards?  Was your income much lower then?  Was your credit rating worse then?  

[smcj]

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@tehdrizzle wrote:

I'm baffled af how so many people have 10, 20, 30, or even 40k credit limits on their cards.

I'm 39, make 185k per year, have a mortgage and auto loan totalling $1500 per month between the two. I have 8 credit cards which I use every month and pay in full. My scores are 840 with EQ, 840 with TU, and 850 with EX. I have zero inquiries as well.

Every time I have requested a CLI it's only for $300-$500. My highest is 21k with Lowes, but I cannot get Capital One, Discover, Citi, or anyone else to give me a larger bump. What's the secret? I'd love to have fewer cards with larger limits, but unfortunately have several with $500 - $3000 limits except for the Lowes and Home Depot cards.

I appreciate any help you all can provide!

---

Honestly, what I'm seeing out here is that high FICO + low or zero balance carry = you're more able to up your total CL with new cards than with CLIs.  Which, for the strategy you've said you want (fewer cards with those larger limits), doesn't quite work.

Separately, if your cards are "bucketed" cards or Platinum-level cards, you're probably not going to break into high CLs with those without some kind of strategy change (and even then, maybe not).  Note I said "probably."  There are ways, I'm sure, and I hear there are ways.  But most of those "ways" I've seen are, for me, a PITA and not worth the trouble.

I have personally been focused on (1) high cash rewards returns at the $0 annual fee level, even if that means multiple cards per issuer (paid to zero before reporting each month), (2) keeping my individual cards at zero reporting balance except ones where "I have a good reason" (example:  a 0% interest rate), (3) keeping my overall utilization below 7% (FICO score management thing there), and (4) diversifying my CC portfolio so having just one issuer go wonky is less likely to produce domino effects.

Items (1) and (4) go together well.  Items (2) and (4) go well together.  Items (2) and (3) go well together.  Items (3) and (4) go really well together.

Consider:  you have 8 cards and you're stuck with what they're offering you.  My card count is in the mid-20s, FICOs either just above or just under 800, I have a thick file, and I'm hitting the same CLI hurdle you are.  I thought I had a lot of cards until I ran into a post in here from someone who said they have 67 (wow).

With all this said, my takeaway was that a strategy like yours, which I used to have, doesn't work to get what I want (especially in the current climate) and it obviously didn't work for diversification at all.  So now I very carefully look into which issuers pull what CR, actively time my inquiry hits to align with 6 month intervals (at tightest), and prioritize which cards I want first based on what particulars I expect (sometimes just hope) to get based on reading up I've done.

What's most interesting to me of all:  you are carrying less than me, you make more than I do (not by an order of magnitude or anything but still), and your FICO has 40-50 points on me.  Yet you're in the same CLI boat.  Tells me plenty -- honestly, makes me feel less bad about spending time mapping out good SL (Starting Line) opportunities, with the CLI question moving to an actively-managed but net "nice if I can make it happen" part of the plan.

Agreed that AMEX is a should-do if you haven't done so already, in re CLIs.  They do better.  BofA is separately likely to do well for you for SL, and (IMO) probably near or parallel to AMEX for CLI -- but I am more careful with BofA because they can get twitchy (again, IMO).

Just my experience, may not apply to yours and definitely doesn't apply to everybody -- but I find the parallels interesting for sure.  Hope its useful in some way.

[Varsity_Lu]

@tehdrizzle 

Become an AmEx member. Honestly.  Start with the  Blue Cash Preferred. Great card and it will easily grow to $27k or more in the first year. Probably higher than that.

[tehdrizzle]

Unfortunately I have been a member of AmEx since 2013 and am hard stuck at a 3k limit with them.

[tehdrizzle]

Unfortunately I already have their Blue Cash card and signed up back in 2013. I have been hard stuck at 1k until last year when they finally bumped me to 3k.

[tehdrizzle]

AmEx had me at 1k since 2013 and finally approved me to 3k last year. I figured they were super strict.

[tehdrizzle]

My last approval for a card was Chase at 4k last year. I haven't made less than 160k for the last 5 years and my credit has always been flawless.