@Anonymous wrote:
Thank you! The lenders are Capital One and Discover. I will start making sure that one of them reports 0. Do you think it helps from the lender's standpoint if it is reporting 0 when considering credit limit increases?
Both Capital One and Discover follow the general rule of reporting the statement balance. So let one statement report a small balance, while you have paid the others off before statement cut. Then pay off the small balance.
The lender doesn't care what you report; they know how you've used their card each day.
As to other lenders reading your report they can tell whether you've been active or not, regardless of what the reported balance is.
As to the more general question you haven't yet asked.... what behavior will encourage the lender to give you CLI's... that is guesswork, especially with these 2 lenders. Both of them have been making public pronouncements about how they're cutting back on credit limit increases. As to how they behave, Capital One has been much more stingy during the past year than it used to be. Discover is strange; it gives some people big CLI's and some tiny CLI's if at all. There have been many theories expressed in this forum as to what is going on in Discover's CLI department. I have no idea if any of the theories are correct. My theory is that the decisions are made in a room full of monkeys who have access to keyboards.
@Anonymous wrote:
Thanks for all the information! Let me know if there are other pieces of advice that you can give me to make the most of this journey!
1. Make as few applications for new credit as possible. Think it through carefully before applying.
2. Don't be misled by Credit Karma & similar sites which try to convince you that new cards are needed to build your credit. Not so. You can have perfect scores with just a few.
3. Before jumping into things, float them here; you'll get a lot of good feedback.
4. Try to never carry a balance. Never pay interest on revolvers.