How to get credit limit increase?!?!?!!

[Anonymous]

Hi everyone! I finally decided to join the forum since this is my favorite place to come for credit card tips!

I currently have 3 credit cards:

Chase Freedom: $500 Limit (1 year)

Capital One Quicksilver: $750 Limit (1 year)

Discover It: $1,600 Limit (1 Month)

Student Loans: $44,000 I pay monthly

TransUnion Score: 682

Experian: 652

I wanted to get a CLI for all of my cards especially the Chase Freedom. I am in my mid 20s and started a new job which means new bills and expenses. Does anyone have any tips on how to get a CLI and also increase your credit score?

I pay in full every month and I try not to use my CC until the new billing cycle so I don't have a balance on my statement.

I realy want to increase my score and especially the CLI. Just looking for some tips

[K-in-Boston]

Welcome to the forums and thanks for joining!  Many of us lurked here for a while before signing up and posting.

For the Chase Freedom, you would need to call the number on the back of your card to request a CLI.  Expect a hard pull inquiry to do so.

For the Capital One and Discover cards, you can ask at any time right in your online account (or even on the app if you have those installed).  Those will be soft pulls and have no effect on your credit score.  The way to maximize your credit score is to have at least 3 revolving credit cards (great job!) and let one of the cards post a statement balance between 1% and 8.99% of your credit line with the rest reporting a zero balance.  That may be overkill unless you're planning to apply for a mortgage or other loan, though.  As a general rule of thumb, just using your cards normally and trying to keep the statement balances below 28.99% of your credit line should work to your advantage.  You are likely getting a little bit of a score ding due to the Discover card being recently opened.  If you can avoid it, try not to open any new accounts until the average age of all of your credit accounts (including the loan and anything else) reaches the 2 year mark.

[HeavenOhio]

All cards reporting zero balances to the credit bureaus will ding you. You'll get a score bump by allowing one card to cut its statement with a small balance (between $5 and 8.9% of its limit). I'd do that with either the Discover or Capital One card as the Chase card will report zero whenever you pay to zero.

Note that you don't need to pay interest to make this happen. Your statement balance should come from charges made during the current cycle.

There doesn't appear to be any rhyme or reason behind Discover CLIs (or lack of CLIs). Chase is hard to pin down too, but they appear to like spending. Capital One likes to see lots of money going through the account, and it likes paying in full.

You can spend a lot over the course of the month as long as you make the necessary payments to keep your utilization in check and reach your desired balance come statement time.

[Anonymous]

The best way to get a CLI is to use your card(s) heavily that you want CLIs on and PIF monthly.  Most that have seen auto-CLIs kick in or that have the most favorable result when manually requesting a CLI will spend at least 1/4-1/3 of their limit monthly, but 1/2 your limit or more would be ideal.

[Creditaddict]

Some might not like it but if you have starter cards I actually suggest applying for new better reward cards now that you are established.

Chase Marriott, United, CSP (If it's showing in your pre-approvals)

The great thing about chase is you can move limits around so if you still want to keep the freedom, pick up a new higher limit card and either keep both and move some of the limit to freedom or just move the entire limit of the new card to your freedom and close out the new card all together!

Capital one, request CLI online yourself but also consider checking if you are pre-qualified for a Venture or the new premier card and consider applying for that because it will have a limit over $5k and after 6 months you can consolidate 2 cap1 cards into 1 if you want or just keep working the CLI button every 6 months on cap1 after a successful cli.

Discover, start asking online and asking every 61 days I believe is what some are experiencing right now.

[thomasjm99]

My experience with Cap1 was to use the card heavily (QS1) and PIF as often as possible. Doing this I went from the $300 initial SL to $4300 in one year with worse scores than you see in my signature now. 

I do like others suggestions to look for a card with some rewards. It can be a hassle to spend $200 and PIF a couple times a week but I did it and it paid off handsomely on top of getting 1.5% cash back. 

[BurgeoningHope]

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@K-in-Boston wrote:

...For the ... Discover cards, you can ask at any time right in your online account (or even on the app if you have those installed).  Those will be soft pulls and have no effect on your credit score...

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Things may have changed. Last month my husband hit the request-an-increase link on the Discover site. He was turned down with insufficient experience with his credit limit - and it was a hard pull.

[Anonymous]

I requested a CLI with Discover IT via online account and HP with denial.  Be careful with Discover this just happended last week.

[K-in-Boston]

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@BurgeoningHope wrote:

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@K-in-Boston wrote:

...For the ... Discover cards, you can ask at any time right in your online account (or even on the app if you have those installed).  Those will be soft pulls and have no effect on your credit score...

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Things may have changed. Last month my husband hit the request-an-increase link on the Discover site. He was turned down with insufficient experience with his credit limit - and it was a hard pull.

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That should not be the case. I ask monthly. I wonder if we should start suggesting that people double check that Discover always has this above the submit button?

After reviewing your application we might need to pull a credit bureau report, which may affect your credit score. In these cases we will proceed with the application only with your consent. 

I have never not seen that language with Discover, though.