What advice do you all have on gardening?
Two folks were kind enough to reccomend cooling it on new apps for 6 months and 1 year respectively, so I am going to do that, but what about working with the credit lines i have based on the history.
How long should I wait to request a CLI to get that Cap1 CL off of a "toy limit" ? Should i use more of the $500 limit each month since i am paying it off or jus keep doing the small $20 hit?
Welcome to the forum.
1. Gardening does not need advice. It means doing nothing except taking good care of the accounts you already have. So the advice is obvious: do not apply for anything. Secondary advice is to stay away from this forum, which infectiously gets us to apply for things.
2. As far as the credit limits you presently have, keep them reporting low balances, with most of them reporting zero balances. You can apply for CLI's but only if you know that they are soft pull.
3. Capital One is a tough one. There's no magic formula. Your card is probably 'bucketed', so that if you stand on your head you won't be able to get a CLI. My best advice is to put it out of your mind. It doesn't matter how much you use an account during the month; what matters is how much you report -- i.e. with Capital One, the statement balance. You want to keep that at less than $140 (28% of $500).
You are off to a very good start towards achieving your goals. Congrats on paying down all those high utilization credit cards!
I agree with the previous suggestions that gardening is key to your future progress. Your current income is not holding you back, though increased earnings certainly won't hurt. You have plenty of accounts with usuable limits. Keep doing what you're doing with requesting soft pull CLIs, perhaps once every 6 months per card. The Capital One account is the one which is likely to give you the most resistance. C1's accounts are often restricted to remaining unchanged from their creation (referred to by the term "bucketing"). I wouldn't waste too much time trying to put a lot of spend on that account; the $20 monthly charge is a good plan. Discover and PenFed might be your best bets for CLIs, so it would make sense to put most of your personal spend on those accounts to show usage. The Amex Platinum's preset limit will eventually be lifted once they are more comfortable with the idea that you won't max out all your cards again. Just continue to use it for your work related travel expenses; Amex likes that kind of spend.
Good luck!
@IWO wrote:thank you @NoHardLimits for taking the time to provide education. I am very appreciative of it and thanks for the congrats, i am making some lifestyle changes to become more liquid with my new career role that i began early last year. I started off upping my lifestyle but abandoned that in favor of starting a 5 year plan to be comepletely debt free including my mortgage of 330k. I will sleep better once i have college funds set up for the kids and wedding funds etc. far better sleep than a new sportscar will give me. I wish i would have learned that lesson earlier than 36 but i had kids fairly late and at least i did make the mental shift. there will be time for all the toys and trips after i put first things first and let the money do the work.
I speak from experience when I say that you will definitely sleep better after getting a handle on your finances and eventually eliminating all debt. When I was young, I fell victim to "lifestyle creep" and increased my spending with each increase in income. Credit cards allowed me to live beyond my means. It took me 10 years to change that habit. Once I saw the light, I dedicated myself to living below my means and increasing my qualifications (went to graduate school at night) to get a much better paying job. It took me 6 years to eliminate all non-mortage loan debt. I'm retired now, but I made sure to payoff my mortgage debt too before retiring.
As others have stated gardening by defition means just to maintain your existing accounts in good standing so your profile ages. Avoid the temptation to apply for any other credit and be careful when going for CLIs as you do not want to generate any hard pulls. I love PenFed, have been a member for years, but every CLI was always a hard pull (albeit EQ only).
You mention learning a lesson about closing cards, but I believe you may have misunderstood. You should definitely close cards that are subprime, meaning they charge you fees. You don't need them at this point and closing a card won't negatively impact a profile like yours. You may be concerned about AAoA, but you're still getting aging metrics on closed accounts. It's not worth paying a fee just because you might be concerned many years from now when they could fall off. My experience is that closed positive accounts stick around a very long time, some for me well over 10 years.
Lastly, you mentioned recently paying off COs. You're not going to get 730 FICO 8 score with a derog like a CO, even after it is paid . You will need these accounts removed, so hopefully the DoFD has aged and they will fall off soon (7 years). EE may help. At peak with paid COs I only saw FICO AU9 and BS9 sneak over 730. My highest FICO 8 with paid COs was 708 and that is with having them paid off for a long time. What's interesting is that the algos don't seem to care how many old COs you have as the scores haven't moved with some COs falling off. Need that last one to fall off to get the big points.
@IWO wrote:thanks so much @SouthJamaica ! Everyone is very welcoming and I am very appreciative of advice coming from your much more experienced position! Do you think if i keep at this for two years I could perhaps get up to 50k total CL's?
Absolutely. In less than 2 years.