People often wonder how they can get a higher credit limit.  This is a great question, but one must be asking it for the right reasons.

If you want additional credit because you are using all that you currently have and want the ability to spend even more, you have a flawed approach to credit card use.  You must understand that using most or all of your available credit is bad for your credit score because of something called credit utilization.  Credit utilization is a balance-to-available credit ratio that FICO—the largest credit scoring agency in the United States—determines for each of your individual credit cards as well as for all of your cards in combination and includes in the calculation of your credit score.  Having high credit utilization will bring down your credit score, thus your spending should be well below your credit limits.

However, if you wish to acquire additional credit in order to lower your balance-to-available credit ratios, your interest in doing so is indeed warranted.  Whether or not you will actually get any additional credit depends on three factors:  your credit score, the economy and the way in which your credit card company regards you.  So let’s take a closer look at each in order to gain a deeper understanding of credit line determinations.

If your credit score has gone up since you opened your credit card account, you have been using credit responsibly, and might therefore deserve a credit line bump.  However, if it stayed the same or fell, you are unlikely to be given a credit raise.  Still, whether or not your credit card company will give you access to additional credit is not pure a function of your credit score because other, less controllable factors come into play as well.

If the economic outlook is gloomy, credit card companies are likely to be conservative in their credit offers to all of their customers.  In these cases, even if your credit score has risen, you might not be granted additional credit.

Additionally, and perhaps obviously, your eligibility for additional credit is dependent on the perspective of your issuer.  If your credit card company believes it must increase the perks of your account in order to keep your business or to profit from off you further, a credit line increase might just be in the cards.  If your company does not feel this way, it might just need some convincing that it should.  A good indicator of how your credit card company views you is whether or not you can qualify for a credit card that is better than the one you currently have.

You must remember that your credit card company will not necessarily act proactively in raising your credit limit.  Thus, it is worth it to call your issuer and inquire as to whether you deserve a credit line raise or what you need to do in order to warrant one.  Ultimately, if you feel that your issuer is not granting you additional credit when it is justified, you can always simply complain.  If this proves unsuccessful, open a new credit card with better terms and a higher credit line, stop using the existing card (for which high credit utilization is a concern) and take advantage of the fact that the major credit bureaus now view you as having more available credit.

For people who don’t have excellent credit, opening a secured credit card is often the easiest way to obtain a higher limit. In order to protect themselves from debt, delinquency and default issuers require that you place a refundable security deposit in opening a secured credit card. This is beneficial both because it does away with the need for a high fee structure and because it acts as your line of credit and therefore prevents you from spending beyond your means. Additionally, since you can add to your security deposit whenever you want, you can effectively increase your credit limit at will. This ultimately might be the most direct and certain way to garner a higher credit limit.