chase credit limit decrease

[s_rob7488]

Forgot to mention some info people had asked or been curious of in previous posts...

I work retail, hourly and commission based, and my wife is salary not in retail. Our W2 from last year reads $73k. My 401k I was thinking of getting $3300 from has a balance of $13,800 ($6,500 vested). I have probably around an extra $500-$1000 a month that's additional to my budget. I may be moving positions temporarily within my company. Was offered a position friday and accepted saturday and am waiting to hear final outcome. Point of that, I am not sure what the pay would be whether it is more or less, I wasn't given details at the time. Thought it might be purtinent info for those willing to try and help. :-)

[score_building]

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@CreditScholar wrote:

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@enharu wrote:

Basically, I have to agree with what everyone has said. You need to keep your finances in check. 

You ought to be worrying more about your financial situation than what Chase is doing to you.

Anyhow, rather than to lecture you about how you had mismanaged yourr finances, this is what I recommend you do:

Right now, Chase is balance chasing you. Other lenders WILL notice this CLD and they might take AA against you as well.

Unless you can somehow pay down most of your debt, chances are Chase will CLD you again after you pay down your Chase card balances. To try to prevent that from happening again, call Chase recon tomorrow. Chances of you getting your original CL back is slim, so your priority is to prevent them from decreasing your CL further.

After you're done calling Chase, look through all your APR rates on each card. I understand you want to pay down your Chase balance ASAP, but chances are they will balance chase you again after you do it, so your utilization will be always near 100% for Chase. Right now your 2nd priority is to prevent other lenders from taking adverse action against you. Not to sound gloom but your relationship with Chase right now is pretty much a lost cause.

Pay down the HIGHEST APR first, and then go pay the 2nd highest APR card. If any of the stuff you bought can be returned, now is the time. You probably dragged those high balances for quite some time in order to get AA. You got to stop buying things that you obviously cannot afford.

Oh, and if you have any UR points, redeem them for CASHBACK NOW and use it to pay your debt. Don't even think about redeeming it for a holiday or any trip. That's the last thing you need right now.

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+1. This is perhaps some of the best advice I've read in quite awhile.

Enharu is correct in that Chase will likely balance chase you down to 0, and that your relationship with them is pretty much dead. They don't want to cut you off immediately since they can't repo what you've already charged, but they also want to make sure that you're unable to charge any more than you already have by CLDing you every time you pay a bit off. Essentially they're cutting their losses.

The other thing you need to keep in mind is that once the CLDs show up on your CRs, your FICO will tank since it'll report both Chase cards as being maxed out. Other lenders will see this, and expect additional AA to follow. You're about an inch away from having the entire house of cards come down on you if you're not careful.

The other thing that gets me is this: why is someone taking ANY vacation with this level of financial trouble? Unless it's a wedding or funeral, it just doesn't seem like a wise move at all.

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Actually will depend largely on the actions of OP and his ability to turn this around and get UTI (and spending in check) If able to do this methodically, making payments of at leat 10-25% of outstanding acct balance for e.g., until paid off, balance chase may be aborted. If unable or unwilling to: ramp up pay down schedule, and change how credit is used, things could head south rather quickly. The relationship can be repaired, the cards are in OPs hands. 

[enharu]

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@s_rob7488 wrote:

So knowing that that's what Chase is trying to do, how can I make the payments on other cards and not have the AA on the other cards? My fico SW says now that my score is 643.....it hasn't ever been that low. Is there any good way to pay other balances or how should I go about paying the chase cards? 

I'll chose to ignore the comment on vacation. It was a belated honeymoon since my wife was ill for 2 months when we got married and I had already purchased airline tickets over a year ago that were paid for. We've just spent too much money. It hasn't been necessarily on just the vacation, we just need to get back to our budget and stick to it. 

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Right now your best bet is to talk to Chase recon. Explain it to them the reasons why you think you got a CLD and you understand the situation you're in, and that you will work towards bringing down your entire CC debt. They might be willing to work with you and cut a deal, i.e. pay xxx amount over this period of time and they'll stop chasing balances temporarily for a period of time before they re-evaluate you again in a few months. It's going to be a YMMV situation with how that turns out, but it's always worth a try. 

As for the other cards, just pay them down starting from the highest APR and go in decreasing order. You will need to pay a lot more than just the minimum payment to try avoid further AA. What you want to show all your lenders is that you're tackling your debt problem seriously. The bank with the lowest APR may be only receiving a little more than the minimum payment, but at least when they SP your file they'll able to see that you are handling your debt problem.

Basically like what CreditScholar said, their main priority right now is to make sure you pay them back. If your actions can convince them that there's a high chance of you not defaulting on them, you're going to be okay.

@CreditScholar, thanks

[s_rob7488]

If you think that calling Chase would be a good idea, I will do that here in a bit. I had a few payments due between the 12-16th of this month and since I figured I would be coming up with a plan with what to pay first etc I made only min payment. I will go over the accounts and figure out what should be paid first. A second thought, some people had suggested to get a personal loan and pay the cards off in one lump sum, wouldnt that look really weird? Of course I would feel more at ease with the accounts paid and one payment to make....Not sure how that would work, or if I would even be approved for say $20,000 personal loan. 

[enharu]

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@s_rob7488 wrote:

If you think that calling Chase would be a good idea, I will do that here in a bit. I had a few payments due between the 12-16th of this month and since I figured I would be coming up with a plan with what to pay first etc I made only min payment. I will go over the accounts and figure out what should be paid first. A second thought, some people had suggested to get a personal loan and pay the cards off in one lump sum, wouldnt that look really weird? Of course I would feel more at ease with the accounts paid and one payment to make....Not sure how that would work, or if I would even be approved for say $20,000 personal loan. 

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Do you have assets that you can use as collateral for the personal loan? If you do, it will help increase your odds, and probably will also help lower the personal loan interest rate. It might be hard to get a personal loan with a good rate otherwise because of the 2 maxed out chase cards and your overall utilization.

Have your statements been generated yet? If they have yet to generate, you can make some payments right away and hope they make it in time to post together with the statement. Or you could always make a Chase payment now, wait 24 hours for it to post, and then call tomorrow. If you can show you are really working on paying down your debt and not just talking about it, it may help convince the underwriter that you're really serious about it. There's probably an employee or specific team that will be reviewing your file periodically. If you can talk to them directly, maybe you can find out more and discuss your options, if not the recon department should still be able to help you out.

A personal loan will not look weird. If they ever ask, just explain that you want to consolidate your debt into a lower-rate loan and pay it down that way. Right now like other's have said, all you're doing is making payments mostly towards interests and barely any principal. It will take a long time before you even start making a significant dent in the debt owed at this rate. If a personal loan isn't viable, or if you're able to pay down your CC debt within a year or two, you could just make payments in excess to bring down the balances quickly.

Have you checked what your DTI ratio is yet? 

[s_rob7488]

The statements have both been cut for Chase. I will see what I come up with for DTI ratio in a bit. Would it make sense to try and get a personal loan for the amount of the chase accounts and Bank of America account? That'd be about $14,500. 

[enharu]

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@s_rob7488 wrote:

The statements have both been cut for Chase. I will see what I come up with for DTI ratio in a bit. Would it make sense to try and get a personal loan for the amount of the chase accounts and Bank of America account? That'd be about $14,500. 

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I would recommend you just get as much as you can, or at least try to include the debt owed for cards that have relatively higher APRs.

Your DTI ratio is going to affect the odds of approval for the personal loan, and also for your evaluation by the credit card companies. According to some posters who are employees of Wells Fargo or just happened to have spoken to an underwriter, they said that Wells Fargo's threshold for DTI is set at 45%. Generally when your DTI is >30% you're flagged for a manual review, and if you're >45%, they will take adverse action against you. Seeing that you have a WF account as well hopefully this info can help a little. I'm not sure what the exact numbers are for the other banks, but it shouldn't be too different.

Explore around and see what options you have. You should come up with a plan ASAP though. With the way things are, American Express will definitely not sit idly by.

[score_building]

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@s_rob7488 wrote:

If you think that calling Chase would be a good idea, I will do that here in a bit. I had a few payments due between the 12-16th of this month and since I figured I would be coming up with a plan with what to pay first etc I made only min payment. I will go over the accounts and figure out what should be paid first. A second thought, some people had suggested to get a personal loan and pay the cards off in one lump sum, wouldnt that look really weird? Of course I would feel more at ease with the accounts paid and one payment to make....Not sure how that would work, or if I would even be approved for say $20,000 personal loan. 

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Unless are in/going into default, if you plan on contacting Chase, it is probably ill advised to do so prior to your payment history clearly indicating that you have a plan in place to pay down debt with more conviction than before. Chase is a banking institution not a family member or friend, proceed with caution and be prepared for unforseen consequences if you approach them with UTI out of control for 'recon' as suggested. Unless it is impossible, consider making it a practice to always pay more than the minimum as a rule of thumb-even just a little more and particularly when UTI is high. A min pay in this scenario is just another red flag.

[enharu]

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@score_building wrote:

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@s_rob7488 wrote:

If you think that calling Chase would be a good idea, I will do that here in a bit. I had a few payments due between the 12-16th of this month and since I figured I would be coming up with a plan with what to pay first etc I made only min payment. I will go over the accounts and figure out what should be paid first. A second thought, some people had suggested to get a personal loan and pay the cards off in one lump sum, wouldnt that look really weird? Of course I would feel more at ease with the accounts paid and one payment to make....Not sure how that would work, or if I would even be approved for say $20,000 personal loan. 

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Unless are in/going into default, if you plan on contacting Chase, it is probably ill advised to do so prior to your payment history clearly indicating that you have a plan in place to pay down debt with more conviction than before. Chase is a banking institution not a family member or friend, proceed with caution and be prepared for unforseen consequences if you approach them with UTI out of control for 'recon' as suggested. Unless it is impossible, consider making it a practice to always pay more than the minimum as a rule of thumb-even just a little more and particularly when UTI is high. A min pay in this scenario is just another red flag.

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+1. Just in case I wasn't clear enough, this is what I meant.

You have to show them you're serious about paying it down. Actions speak a lot louder than just words.

Right now you're also calling recon to plead with them to temporarily halt further balance chasing, not to get your limits back. It is almost guaranteed they will automatically CLD you again once you pay it down. So, what you need is for them to stop balance chasing you while you make payments, so that other lenders will be less likely to AA you as well.  See if they're willing to give you a "probational" period where they will not CLD you further if you make a certain amount of payment over a specific period of time. 

There's no way they're going to get your limits back with the way things are right now. Just weather through this, and the limits will come back on its own in the future when your financial outlook is a lot better. Making only minimum payments while dragging high balances is a big red flag.

Before you call Chase, do at least make a payment and wait for it to post, or just pay other card(s) and wait for their new statements to be generated, and come up with a credible plan. You will need to sell your story and try to convince them. 

[s_rob7488]

It seems as if finding a loan is going to be the best option. It will allow me not to have to juggle payments and even though it'll take a while to pay it back, it seems most reasonable. Feel free to correct me if I am wrong......and this is all under the assumption that I am able to even qualify for one.