What are the steps to getting high limits?

[dtjones052209]

I have been observing and reading the many post of people receiving high CL increases. Their backgrounds vary across the board.  I am curious on each individuals plan of attack when asking for the 5k, 10k, 20k and so on limits. I am starting to see a trend in the post of people who received the higher limits because of their other card limits. But what did you do to get the first increase and how was your situation. Does income play a lot in the equation or just timely payments of the  $700 to 1k limits?

The only reason I ask is that I may try my hand at trying to see if I can get an increase. I know there are maybe steps along the way to obtaining  the great feats.

The final question is that once you receive that limit does your situation change for future card request?

Thanks,

DJ

[blondy250]

Slow and steady, most of my major cards are between 25-30K. I use my cards responsibly and have increased my credit slowly, last increase was a $2200 SP CLI on a CITI card (yesterday online). My largest increase in recent memory was a Discover SP CLI of 5K. I have available credit of approximately 100K which is much less then my annual income and my usage is at 2% overall. 

[dtjones052209]

Blondy250- Thanks for your reply. So slow and steady always works, but does it depend on the type of card you have? Say for instance does capital one have a card that could carry a limit that high or would i be better off looking for amex and disc?

[stlsme]

Slow and steady is very true. I know you can get high limits by having a high aoaa long history with a complete clean report. The only other way is high income imo.

[Gunnar419]

My first $10k+ limit was the result (you probably won't like to hear) of being with the company a long, long, long time and having a perfect record with them. I'm not a high income earner so it just took patience. My second $10k limit stunned me. I got it on approval of the card and I'm sure I got it partly because the other card already had $10k+ and partly because I had hardly apped for anything in years. My third $10k limit came after several Amex CLIs. God bless Amex and its liberal CLI policies.

[Gunnar419]

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@dtjones052209 wrote:

Blondy250- Thanks for your reply. So slow and steady always works, but does it depend on the type of card you have? Say for instance does capital one have a card that could carry a limit that high or would i be better off looking for amex and disc?

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It does depend in part on the card issuer. Amex is known to be generous in a short time span and so are the store cards backed by GE. Discover can be generous, but usually over time. Chase is impossibly stingy with a lot of cardholders, but generous to others. YMMV.

CapitalOne definitely has cards (like the Venture line) whose CLs can be high, but with CapOne, unless you START with a high CL, you probably won't end up with a high CL because they're stingy with increases.

[blondy250]

Good question I'm sure others will chime in, my cards are Chase (several), Citi, Amex(Plat, BCP), Discover, GE. My lowest limits are Discover and GE both are above 10K however. For me Citibank and Chase have given me the highest limits, Ive never requested a CLI with Chase it's always been an auto increase, don't know the internal algorithms that are used besides income and credit score that are used to determine limits but they exist.

[user5387]

I'd suggest doing a Google search on the phrase "credit pulls database".  There is a lot of information available about who gives high limits.

In particular, I'd try to get a CU card or two, since they are known to be generous.

Beyond that, I'd suggest asking for CLIs at regular intervals, especially SP ones.  For example, the other day I logged into my Discover account and got a $1500 CLI by filling out the form.

[Cdnewmanpac]

It depends on both why you have low limits and what your income is. If you have low income and a thin or damaged file, then slow and steady is really the only option. If you have higher income or a change in income, it is possible to escalate quite quickly. It took 15 months for me to go from an amwx revolver with a 1k limit to one with a 25k limit and chase has "chased" Amex at each step. I've gotten two auto CLI from chase within a month of my new Amex limits posting: first from 9.5k to 13, then most recently to 22k. Total available credit has gone from 5500 two years ago to current >100k. Others on this board have done similarly.

[SnackTrader]

Income plays a big role. Never discount the correlation between how much money you make and how much debt you can pay off.