credit limit increase will this affect my score, if so by how much?

[Anonymous]

Hi.....I noticed when I logged onto my account to make a payment apply for credit limit increase was to my right, which had never been there before listed under special products or something like that on my Citi Matercard. My CL was 1000 before and I just paid it down to $100 balance and applied for a credit limit increase for a total of $2000 CL.

So I have a citi card with a balance of $100 (was 800 and some change), 2000 CL

Best buy CC with a balance of about 900, and 2500 CL

Home Depot CC with a balance of about 800 and 2500 CL

Orchard bank CC with a 0 balance and 720 CL

So I was at about a 38% usage and now I am at about a 23% usage, will this bring my scores up?? and do you think citi cards do a soft or hard pull for CLI because I see it on my equifax, but it didn't state if my score increased or decreased or anything

[marty56]

IMHO I think your score might go up but you would get your bigest incrase by PIF'ing all cards but 1 and have that one at 9% util.  Also since Citibank RJ'd people I would PIF it and keep it PIF.

Dont know about the INQ but it is possible you lost points for the hard INQ which might give you a net result of a score drop.

[Anonymous]

Im doing my darndest to pay all my cc's in Full. Right now I have a total of 7720 available to me and I have about 1700 left to pay on 2 cards. I just PIF the remaining on my Citi card. Each paycheck I put as much towards paying them off as I can. My goal is to get to 720's so trying really hard.

[haulingthescoreup]

Good for you! You're heading in the right direction.

Reducing your util can help your scores IF you cross a certain percentage threshold. You might have done so, but this is murky territory.

Please let us know if you do see a score change. If so, my guess would be that it would be by going lower than 30%.

-- In other words, for those whom I've confused, you're not going to get a score change every time you drop your util 1%. You need to get the reported util below a certain figure --85%, 50%, 30%, 10%: these are some of the figures that we like to speculate about. So yes, it's possible to make a super-human effort to pay down your cards, and your score doesn't budge. Then you cough up another $100, and your scores jump 15 points. This is why.