Claire from Tired But Happy started a meme on credit card limits, and what we felt has contributed to them being so high (or low). Here’s my offering:
Currently, we have three credit cards, with the following credit lines:
- [tag]Chase[/tag]: $22,600
- [tag]MBNA[/tag]: $22,100
- [tag]AMEX[/tag]: $17,900
for a grand total of $62,600 available to hang ourselves with when the mood strikes!
How’d they end up at those levels? Really pretty simple: we used the MBNA, almost but not quite to their limits, continued to timely pay at least the minimums – and most of the time, not much more – and every six months or so they’d tack on another $500 or $1000 or $2500 with which to get ourselves in deeper. MBNA was particularly good at that, always seeming to read when we really needed that extra bit of [tag]debt[/tag]. (Did I happen to mention, MBNA sucks? No? There. I mentioned it.)
Chase was really good at increasing our limit to essentially whatever we wanted to use as a balance transfer when that good ol’ MBNA card got crazy with their interest rates, so they went up in big chunks along the lines of $5,000 or $7,500 at a time.
And that AMEX? When I initially got it, I had $7,900 available. Less than 3 months later, they tacked on another $10,000 just because the weather was nice that day. Well, no, not really (I don’t think anyway 
)… Actually, I’m thinking they just looked at our [tag]credit report[/tag], saw what the [tag]credit line[/tag] was on the other two, and decided to bump it up into their range.
We’ve never done anything to intentionally increase the limits. I don’t hit the automated ‘increase my limit’ button on their websites. I don’t call and try to talk the CSR into bumping them up. I don’t shop for the latest cashback / points / miles / other random trinket to get you to use me more card. I don’t care what my credit utilization level is, or what it’s done to my credit score. I want them minimized, marginalized & trivialized to the point where they are no longer even a lingering notion.
