Hi Flish. I see it just more as a matter of convenience. When you have a big total credit limit, you can use your cards and not worry about how much they report in a given month (or worry about having to pay them down). As Donny says, the utilization will still always be low, even if your spending goes up one month.
Your concern is valid, though, which touches on the whole issue of carrying a balance, which Donny also talked about. (That's different from the convenience issue of reporting a big balance one month.) Carrying balances almost always involves paying high interest, so I can see why you'd be nervous about paying ultra-high interest on 6k of debt when you have an annual income of 60k.
The good news is that a person can spend a lot of money every month on his credit cards, even with a low total credit limit, and still keep his utilization around 1-3%. You have to pay the cards a few times during the month, but it can be done (and pretty painlessly).
I think people here sometimes do end up with ultra-high total credit limits, but that can often just be an artifact of the fact that they like applying for cards that give them huge sign up bonuses. My new Chase Sapphire Preferred just gave me an extra 26k on my total CL. I wasn't looking for that. 5k is all I probably need on that card. It just kinda happened without my asking for it.
