Originally Posted by
felinaar
Wouldn't canceling the original card also lead to a significant reduction in average age of your accounts (with corresponding hit to your credit score)? OP mentions that she's had this account for a long time. This might not matter as much if you've had several other accounts for a while.
I wouldn't be as concerned about the FICO score as the credit limit. We have no credit limit on our AMEX account (which we pay off every month). That comes in handy when we have large expenses. Usually medical expenses - I have a very high insurance deductible - my husband did too before he went on Medicare. But occasionally travel costs on a "blow out the stops" trip. And - when we built our house - our builder let us charge everything possible on our credit cards instead of us paying him - and then his paying third parties. Lots of money involved in that. I'd have to check into the credit limit thing.
Perhaps I'm wrong - but I recall someone here mentioning getting a Platinum Card with a $1k credit limit - yikes! OTOH - depending on one's credit position - it is frequently easy to increase your credit limit a lot. I have a Capital One card - last one left standing without a FOREX fee when you travel abroad - and when I called a few years ago before an international trip - and said I wanted to charge everything for our trip on the Capital One card - the company increased the credit limit from $5k to $20k over the phone.
Ironically - the only time I checked our FICO score - maybe 5 years ago - it wasn't that high. Reason given was we charged too much every month (even though we never carried a balance). At the time - we had added my late FIL as an additional cardholder on our CO Mastercard - and were charging his nursing home costs - about $7k a month - to the credit card - not a fun way to get miles - but it's better than spending all that money and not getting miles. In addition - we were charging most of our expenses on credit cards too. So I guess - at least as far as the credit rating agencies were concerned - we looked like a bunch of spendthrifts!
I suppose - in the long run - the point of a credit card is to have credit if and when you need it. And - even if you can write checks - it's nice to get a little extra something when you spend money. But if you can't use a card because of a low credit limit - what's the point?
Just as an aside - I think it's not unusual for married couples to have the husband as a primary cardholder on most/all credit card accounts. Over the years - I've found that it's useful for a wife to get some cards where she is the primary or only cardholder - to establish credit in her own right. In case she loses her husband (through divorce - death - whatever). Robyn