Avoid or not avoid spending more than CL??
 

My question is about paying down new spend in the middle of the month so you can put more on the card before the next statement. I'm thinking 2x, 3x, 4x the credit limit per month. Does this risk getting shutdown or are the banks positive about it? Thanks for helpful responses.

depends on a lot of factors, which issuer, history, spending patterns etc... Either way it is risky but some people churn their CL many times over apparently.

Do whatever you're comfortable with, but realize there's a risk banks may shut you down if you go past their comfort levels.

its highly YMMV and has many many factors involved. You will have to decide what your risk tolerance is and how much you value the relationship with the particular cc issuer

Not a problem for me with AMEX
 

I got an AMEX Delta Platinum Business card last year with the goal of spending $25k to earn the 10k MQM I needed to get to Medallion status. AMEX set my limit low for this card ($4k) because I had four other AMEX cards at the time with a total limit North of $70k.

Anyway, my daughters college tuition of $7k came due shortly after I received the Delta Plat card. I was also doing some MS with the card, so I run the card up close to the limit and paid it off 3 or 4 times within the 1st month I had it.

I don't make a habit of the doing this every month, but I have charged 2x - 4x the credit limit in a month several times with AMEX with no adverse consequences.

Right, but in general the problem is that there aren't adverse consequences until suddenly there are.

So the consensus answer is that the banks aren't positive about spending more than the CL.

Your statement could be applied to almost any part of the MS game.

I play the game in moderation and try not to worry about bad things that might happen.

Not all issuers will increase your CL for repayments made midcycle as well, keep that in mind.

what bank is that? I don't think I have come across that before.

It also helps to split your MS between as many companies as you can that have cards with benefits worth it to you. I split high six figures a month between Citi, Amex, Chase and Barclays because they all have rewards/cash back that I want. Amex is good because they have multiple cards with NPSL that earn MR and if they do an FR as long as you didn't lie on your application about household income, they don't seem to really shut anyone down. I split my Amex MS between a Platinum, a PRG, an Everyday Preferred, an old Blue Cash and a SPG. Not a peep from Amex yet.

Did you even bother to search the forum? This must have been asked 1,000 times already. Everyone here has different experiences. Some spend 4X their CL and have not gotten shut down, some spend 1.5X and have gotten shut down, etc. Just do what makes you feel most comfortable.

Some care, some dont. Some people care, some dont. I dont care therefor I spend at least 5-10x my CL monthly.

That was really my point, an individual's previous success tells very little. It happened with the Citi 5x TYP, people trying to find a safe level ($5K a month, 50% of CL, 1.5 CL) with people posting their successes. Then Citi got aggressive and those stories were worth nothing.

So don't worry about bad things, but don't take others success as any reliable form of guidance.

Your doing ~900K a month? Six figures is $100K. High six figures is closer to $900K

what's your CL on the cards you do your heavy MS on?

I usually do a few times my CL in a month, as in 3-4x, but I know others are more aggressive. What I do is:

1) scale up gradually with a new card/bank, and get them comfortable with you as a responsible borrower with a non-fraudulent account

2) wait until transactions have posted, then initiate a payment. Yes, it's slower than starting a bill pay from your checking account or WM while an MS transaction is still pending, but you don't lose that much time and it avoids the scenario where something takes longer to post than you expect and you end up with a big credit balance. Which is a big red flag

3) Even if your CL is restored immediately after making the payment (Amex always does this for me) don't take advantage of it to charge more until that payment has cleared your bank. Also, for a card with no pre-set spending limit which has a revolving credit limit, don't ever charge more than your revolving limit (until you have paid off the previous charges), although maybe push things closer to that limit than you would with a regular, non-NPSL card.

4) Always make sure to pay in full before statement cuts to keep your utilization low so you keep your score up and lenders don't freak out when they do a soft pull to check up on you, except one card which you should let close at 5-10% utilization. (Exception - US Bank reports to the bureaus at the beginning of a calendar month, rather than statement balance.)

This has worked well for me and enabled me to hit the good deals fairly hard while avoiding shutdowns. The ability to rotate between different CCs means I don't give up too much in terms of volume, and since all the good offers are concentrated with a few banks it pays to be somewhat risk averse with them (but not so risk averse that you miss out on the deals).

YMMV and all that. It's not in the banks' interest to let you know how much is too much for them. If you do get shut down your card will most likely just be declined one day and they will tell you your accounts are closed when you call to find out why. There will always be some guesswork involved and you can never assume what works for someone else will work for you, or conversely that something that caused AA for one person will do the same for another.

This should be written in stone somewhere. Never, never, NEVER pay a charge before it posts. If everyone followed this piece of advice, we could eliminate countless of "I got shutdown because I had a negative balance" posts.

I do the same. Always wait for the charges to post before paying. Only when the credit line is available again do I start charging the card again.

Haha, sorry, it was late. High five figures.

Darn. I was going to ask you a lot of questions. lol

Wouldn't it be wiser to run a small balance so that a negative is not possible? Then pay off 90% before the statement date.

<<< takes the prize for Most Tautologous Comment Ever.

... and that's true for everything, from car wrecks to cancer. So what?

I've put $30k on a Barclays card with A $3.5k credit limit since January and haven't heard anything and make many payments throughout the billing cycle. I also put some regular spend on the card though. I think it's all YMMV

To be fair to the original comment. . . the person in your example would drive drunk on the weekends and smoke two packs of cigarettes a day.

As was already explained, it meant that posts of the form "I've been doing X x CL and I'm fine" don't really have much value.

Whereas every one of my posts is worth its mass equivalent in zinc.

you make some pretty authoritative and aggressive posts for someone who has been around for 3 months and who, btw, is wrong with your 1 size fits all generalizations based upon your first semester of MS 101.

i have an amex acct i am working with that has carried a negative balance about 90% of the time the past 2 years. sometimes over 30x CL negative. have done several purchases that were 5-10x CL, and one 24x (made possible due to... neg balance). another amex card negative balance about 40% of the time- most about 4x CL. both have large negative balances on statements.

is this extreme? yes
is there danger of a shut down or FR? sure.
is it a sample size of 1? kinda- 1 or 2.
would i advise this to others? no.
is it proof that, as is often, ymmv? obviously
is it worth the risk? depends on one's situation. you're not getting very far MSing $1000 CL. that one card has done over 350,000 in MS the past 2 years. 350x CL. by your 'rules' it would have done what- 24k? 30k tops?worth it? ya think...

the acct had/has a $1,000 CL. so it became a test bed. the only other amex acct held had a 2700 limit. so, there was really nothing to lose.

in fact, one could speculate that with the tiny limit and constant credit balance, amex also has nothing to lose. it's not even a credit card, it's, effectively, a debit card. FR is to protect amex. considering they are basically a bank on this account, their risk is nil. the main issue i've worried about is whether it looks like money laundering. it isn't but, of course, everything in MS looks very much like it. aside from that, is amex really going to FR a $1000 CL? i'd laugh and tell them if anyone should show creditworthiness it's them, since they're often holding so much of my money!

i don't know about other banks, but that is my amex experience. in fact, i posted in the barclays thread about experiences with overpay this week, as there is a new 'arrival' with a low cl and a similar ramp seems on the horizon with them.

btw, would i do it with chase? no. too much to lose.

I have a card with 5K limit. I routinely do 6x - 7x CL. I wait for purchases to post, pay and then buy more.

To you guys running multiples of your CL, are the purchases obvious MS like Amex gift cards or is it more diversified?

only helpful as a data point if you say the card/issuer...

whatever is being used :)

Avoid or not avoid spending more than CL??
 

My Barclay Arrival and my SO's were closed by Barclays after 8 months. I had just ramped up to 2x CL per month on each card. They stated "history of usage."

I mix in regular spend but the bulk $ amount of the purchases are obvious MS. I dunno if they care or not. I've had to call in a few times for fraud alerts for gift cards but each time it was simple and they thanked me several times for using the card and apologized for the inconvenience.

What did they do with the points when you got shut down?

pigs get fat, hogs get slaughtered... ;)

oh wait :p

Hmmmmm, scary stuff. Sorry to hear that. Were you using an AU on your SO's account. If so, was your AU card the majority of the spending? Any Boost purchases?

Sorry to hear that.

Just wondering. Did you call them to try to reopen or to find out the real reason? Were any of your other accounts closed, and did they look at your credit report?

This caught my attention too, because I have very large Barclay point balances and have been concerned about closure.

Credipig may give a more informed response than mine, but reading their other posts, he/she said no luck getting the point balance. Also, if it is pertinent, he/she was almost exclusively using arrival to load Visabuxx card as I understand it. I don't understand that card much, but hopefully, for me, that is what caused the shut down rather than CL use or point redemption or point balance.

I am sitting with over $12K in Barclay point balances, primarily from using Boost, and do not want to get shut down. I was doing 2x to 3x CL, but am sticking to 1x for now and hopefully will not get hit. I guess I may need to do a bunch of reservations, redemptions, and then cancelations to get my points out instead of holding them for real trips, if they are going to cancel and forfeit our points whenever they want.

People need to keep in mind that 2x to 3x CL is a really relative number. If your CL is only $4K, doing 2x to 3x CL with a good salary is not bad. However if you have a CL of say $15K and you are doing 2x to 3x CL then that is a completely different story.

So I guess what I am saying is that you can't just assume that doing multiples on your CL is necessary bad if you have a low CL. However if you have a high CL than it is NOT a great idea to be spending a total of say $50K/month compared to someone who is doing the same multiple and is spending a total of $15K/month.

The card is transparent and has a blue square in the middle of it. I use it at CVS and Grocery Stores. That should be a good enough hint.

As far as purchases, I only do MS and its quite obvious if looked at. However, I do spread it to different stores, and I use different amounts each time. I add a Coke or something to the end.

Edit: I routinely make sure any points are used month to month. I dont hold a balance.