How to get a larger credit limit?

[smcj]

---

@tehdrizzle wrote:

Thanks for the help and advice. Here is what I currently have:

Capital One Venture - $3750

Capital One Quick Silver - $4250

Capital One Savor - $500

Great River FCU Visa - $5000

Best Buy/Citi - $1750

Home Depot/Citi - 10k

Lowes/Synchrony - 21k

AmEx Blue Cash - 4k

Chase Freedom - 4k

---

Offhand (*very* offhand) here are my fast thoughts:

Capital One is its own universe/discussion topic for CLI strategy across many forums.  Net, they want to see spend, and they are algorithmic about it to a fault.  I would not expect to get much out of them that you aren't able to currently without more spend with them.

Can't speak to Great River FCU, but CUs are also, at the individual CU level, kind of their own thing.  So I would not take whatever is going on here (good or bad) as representative as the World Writ Large.

You have two Citi retail cards.  Each of them will have their own things going, but Citi is not super generous and I know for the HD card they want to do hard pulls for CLIs that they don't offer up on their own.  I have no hands-on with the Best Buy/Citi but if it is anything like the HD Citi, again, not generous as such, but at the same time may be geared towards what sorts of purchases they expect (appliance purchase and home improvement project possibilities alone make me expect HD/Citi to have larger lines than generic revolving cards).

You've mentioned AMEX isn't budging, so that's that for your particular scenario.

Chase is one of the few lenders left who (under some circumstances at least) will pull all three credit reports to approve a credit card.  Pretty much the definition of conservative.

The Lowe's/Synchrony lines up to my eye given home improvement large purchase probabilities, and also lines up with how I see Synchrony managing their CareCredit product (also geared for large purchases).

End to end, net, I don't see "hungry" lenders in your non-store-card profile -- in fact, it looks like the opposite, whether that's a characteristic of that lender in general (e.g. Chase) or something that seems to be what they think of your credit profile in particular (AMEX).

There was a point where I would have pointed you to Discover, but they're CapOne-owned as of recently so I don't know what they're up to these days, algorithmically.  A BofA card is an idea -- they have one out there offering an introductory 6% cash back on things right now, and some of their cobrands have been generous and new-customer-approval-friendly in the past (I forget what their cobrands are right now, but you get the idea).  US Bank might be one to look at (they have a diversity of card products, choose carefully so you don't end up with FOMO about one if you apply for and get another).

How is your situation with respect to hard inquiries (count and age of each) currently showing up on each of the big 3 reports?

[smcj]

P.S. It does indeed look to me like your non-store-card lines are being kept dancing around a $5k ceiling -- I agree with others in-thread who have suggested that once you crack it, other possibilities will follow.  Now, they may not be improved CLI possibilities, I sense there will be a lot of YMMV on that, but if you land a card with a 5-figure SL that may run in parallel with, or at least open the door to, other new-card SLs.

IIRC, Amex was the first to open that door for me, then BofA blew them out of the water, and later Discover started running parallel (old school Discover, not present-day).

[GZG]

---

@tehdrizzle wrote:

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

---

go request a credit line increase for $9,000 right now

either you will get it, or you won't and you'll get a denial reason letter, knowing that reason will be really important to know what's going on here

you don't have any like returned payments or closed out bank accounts right?

[ElvisCaprice]

---

@tehdrizzle wrote:

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.

---

Everyone's asking the wrong questions.  What is your utilization?  Do you current cards fullfill that?  Keep you under 10%?  Because if they don't then you aren't going to have the Fico scores you claim.  So I claim bull on this story.  Getting higher credit limits is never an issue with what you claim here.  In fact, the real issue is not allowing them to give you too high of CL's and suck the air out of the credit room.  Just my 2 cents, good luck.

[Varsity_Lu]

Found this. How does this info factor into things?

Slowly but surely getting there 

[NoHardLimits]

---

@Varsity_Lu wrote:

Found this. How does this info factor into things?

Slowly but surely getting there 

---

Good find @Varsity_Lu .  As I suspected, the credit profile was once much weaker.  Some lenders have very long memories when it comes to bankruptcies.  Just because the BK is gone from the current credit bureaus, that doesn't mean that lenders don't still have record of it in their internal files.

[Patient957]

---

@GZG wrote:

---

@tehdrizzle wrote:

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

---

go request a credit line increase for $9,000 right now

either you will get it, or you won't and you'll get a denial reason letter, knowing that reason will be really important to know what's going on here

you don't have any like returned payments or closed out bank accounts right?

---

^^ This.  Do this.  Let's see if they give you a CLI or, if not, what the reasons are.

[Patient957]

---

@ElvisCaprice wrote:

Getting higher credit limits is never an issue with what you claim here.  In fact, the real issue is not allowing them to give you too high of CL's...

---

Agree.  Something don't add up here.

[FicoMike0]

There must be some baddies there. Something doesn't add up. With those scores there's no way amex isn't going 3X on $4K. 

[NoHardLimits]

Read futher up.  @Varsity_Lu  found an old post regarding a bankruptcy.