Credit Score & Car Insurance?

[Anonymous]

Hmm..

I wonder if I should CLD my Amex down to $30k in that case. I didn't know about this magic upper limit on cards being included in utilization.

I wish I knew more about that!

It's not like I'm using anywhere near the limits I think my last Amex statement was around $600. I pay in full every month. Goal was to push limits up to where I would get only a couple percent util on my ordinary spending if I just let everything report and use autopay to pay in full.

Getting ACL over 11k was just a nice bonus. If it's going to hurt FICO I may want to lower it.

[CreditDunce]

IIRC the codes for having more than 75% util on a loan said it didn't count TLs over $50,000.  I don't remember any other codes mentioning excluding TLs based on the credit limit.  In any case, I wouldn't CLD the Amex.   Purchasing your LN score  gives you a couple of reason codes about what is most hurting your score.  It would give you an idea of what you most should try to remedy.   The average credit limit reason code is probably not that important of a code.  There may not be much point in trying to maximize it.  

Also, if you have an insurance agent, you may want to talk to them to see if your insurance score is really causing your rates to be higher.  I didn't think it really hurt your rates unless your score was really bad.   The color of your car may be hurting your rates more than your insurance risk score.

[Anonymous]

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@Anonymous wrote:

Hmm..

I wonder if I should CLD my Amex down to $30k in that case. I didn't know about this magic upper limit on cards being included in utilization.

I wish I knew more about that!

It's not like I'm using anywhere near the limits I think my last Amex statement was around $600. I pay in full every month. Goal was to push limits up to where I would get only a couple percent util on my ordinary spending if I just let everything report and use autopay to pay in full.

Getting ACL over 11k was just a nice bonus. If it's going to hurt FICO I may want to lower it.

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I agree with CD about everything he just said.

And I don't see how your 40k CL on one card is hurting your FICO score.  Remember that FICO 8 does not drop cards with a CL of 50k or less.  That seems to have been established very well via some recent testing.  The mortgage models have lower ceilings, but who cares?  If you are preparing for a mortgage you should be having most cards at $0 with one card having a $20 balance anyway.

[Anonymous]

Well it was previously a $25k card that was contributing about a quarter of my total limit for utilization. If now it's counted as zero then my utilization that might previously have been 5% will now be more like 7%. I've noticed in the past that even such small differences seem to make a few points difference.

I guess not much of a big deal but then neither is ACL and realistically I don't actually imagine going to a car dealer and buying a new car on my CC so I doubt I'm ever going to get near that limit.

What are the cutoffs for the older model? Is a 30k limit going to bring me down as well?

Maybe I should have left well enough alone at 25k.

Amex for whatever reason is the only one that's been super generous with CLI. The others come in small increments of a few thousand. Discover seems likely to catch up eventually but my other cards just don't CLI very fast. Likely to be years to get most of them into the 20k range, if ever.

[Anonymous]

34.9k is the cutoff for the oldest models (I think) but again I am unsure why you'd care about those.  They might matter when one is being a house, but when you are buying a house you can and should have all your cards at $0 with one card at $20 or so.

And doubtless those ancient models won't even be used for home loans eventually.

This is just not a big deal.  I was just trying to rein you in from your desire to raise your ACL up to 15k or whatever it was you were aiming for -- via angling to make your 40k limit 60k or whatever.