Building credit and obtaining credit are two things that's entirely different.
Obtaining credit is having several different credit cards with several credit card issuers with no means of building a credit relationship with them. You don't spend a lot, just enough to keep your card active. This will keep your minimum payment low just in case you get in a jam.
Building Credit is building a strong relationship with the card issuer. You have several cards with one issuer and you build a credit history with them over several years obtaining higher credit limit increases throughout the years.
Many consumers have credit cards but their history with them is less than avaerage. For example, you get AMEX Blue Preferred they give you a staring limit of 2K, you spend 80% of your credit monthly on things like cable, electric bill, gas bill, car insurance, home insurance/renter insurance. Those thing you are going to pay for every month any way. why not charge your card and just pay the card balance off. You are going to pay the credit card issuer or the company anyway. When you ask for an increase it will at the least justify your limit. They will look at how much you spend a month and how much you pay it off or do you carry a balance. Now you are building credit with the card issuer, just having cards and not using them is not building credit and thats the reason for below average credit limits. If you want to book a vacation save money and use that. Dont book a vactaion if you cant pay for it. Vacation comes once a year for the average consumer. If you cant save for a vaction in one year. The re-evaluate your finances and downsize on your spending habits.
Building credit is essentially what you want to do with each card issuer. Obtain one card and build on that you will be cap, depending on the card you get and on to the next one. Most consumer have several cards with no credit history with the card issuer. That is the sock drawer method and that's fine, but here lies a problem if you sock drawer a chase card with hardly no activity or no activity at all. If you apply for a new chase card what do you think your limit will be, since you have proven to them already that you don't want to build a credit relationship with them. You just want to obtain credit.
For most consumers this method is too late to apply, you have several cards already and the limits are not going up. This is the reason why. You have 37 cards and 30 cards is below 10K. How much credit history do you have with each issuer.
So add up your chase, amex, citi, etc.
if you have 4 chase cards and your total limit is 5k and below. Over the years of your first chase card how much did you spend with them. You can use your statements to caculate this. so in 2010 you spent $1k, 2011 you spent 1.2K, and so on, this should give you an idea of the total credit limit chase gave you and the amount you spend over the years of being a chase card holder. Now average up all of your cards, if you would have simply used chase in the beginning. meaning your total usage would have been well over average and you could have had access to much higher limit with chase. and other card issuers would not have a problem extending you a higher limit.
Building credit is a longer process to achieve, but obtaining credit is easy.
