Originally Posted by
nwflyboy
Because I plan to apply for another Chase card in a few months, and want to have plenty of credit available for that one.
It's nice to know that they're ready to extend that much credit to me by default (especially when I probably have a total of $20,000-$30,000 in credit available on my *other* 4 or 5 Chase credit cards) but I'll certainly never use anything close to that. YMMV.
Originally Posted by
jphripjah
I agree. I lowered mine from 23k today. I'll never need that much, and I would prefer to be approved for my next Chase card automatically without being interrogated and having to ask them to move credit from another card.
DONT ever lower the credit limit on your own. You would not get it back for a long long time.
The lowering credit limit so you would have more room for the next card was the strategy for the past, way past, before the 2008/2009 financial crisis. The current practice Chase has is, if the credit limit is lowered by the cardholders - that means the cardholders do NOT need as much credit. The system automatically "locks" your total credit allowed at the level after you lower it. We learned this by making the mistake 18 months ago - we lowered a huge line on BA card a few months before we canceled it, thinking we would leave more room for new card. Guess what? When my husband applied the Priority Club card to meet the Crack the Case promotion, instead of getting the usual 20K limit, he got a $1900! We called to ask what happened, particularly we just lowered his BA credit line from $28K to $10K. We were told the reason why as I described above. Nobody could over-ride it. Luckily we kept $10K on the BA card so we could move the bulk of it to the PC card - otherwise, I dont know how a hotel card with only $1900 could do when you travel. A subsequent CO targeted 50K offer got a credit line of $2000, even 12 months had passed from the BA line lowering mistake. It took over well over a year to regain back the lowered amount. His latest Marriott card had an instant approval and a decent line like in the past.
The correct strategy is to keep the maximum credit line Chase is willing to give you. And to call to check if you need to reallocate lines when your application is not instantly approved. You do not need to wait for denial letter - just wait a few hours to may be overnight, the time needed for your application to be preliminarily evaluated by the system and gave enough internal rating for the credit specialist to look at - when you call, all the credit specialist needs is to verify the basic info on your application - so dont forget what you have filled out - and s/he would tell you if you have reached the max. You then can tell him or her which card(s) you can reduce the line to meet the new card's minimum line. That is the way to do it.
Having a large credit line in most cases, is an asset. Having a 20K line does not mean you have to charge up 10K. It is perfectly fine to use only 5 to 10% of the available line - helps your FICO as well.