if you have a credit card and you feel like your limit is just too low like for instance if you
have your very first credit card and only has a 200 limit then it is very easy to spend that
200 bucks and then you can't spend any more on the card so how do you increase your credit card
limit well it's very simple there's a few things you can do but first of all I just want to talk
about why you would actually want to increase your credit card limit now one of the biggest
reasons why most people want to get a credit limit increase is simply so they can spend more
and this can either be a good thing or a bad thing depending on how you actually use your credit card
because if you're the type that carries over a balance and you typically pay interest then
you really don't want to be getting an increase because now you're just going to be accruing more
debt you're going to be paying more interest and the increase isn't actually going to help
your life it's going to make it worse because I don't want you to be getting into more debt
I want you to be getting out of debt now if you pay off your credit card statement every single
month in full then you're not not going to be paying any interest and therefore a higher limit
can make life quite a bit easier because for instance me myself if I make a five thousand
dollar purchase I can just pay it off whenever I feel like it and then because I'm not paying any
interest I'm not penalized for making that giant purchase and this is very helpful because I have
a higher limit because like I said earlier if your limit is too low like for instance 500 bucks and
you want to make a thousand dollar purchase then you just can't make that happen without having a
higher credit limit and that is one of the biggest helpful reasons to get an increase is just because
it can make big purchases a lot easier and more convenient now the next reason why you'd want to
get a credit card limit increase is because it can actually help your credit score if you use
your credit card right because of something called credit usage this is one of the categories inside
of your credit score and it's actually worth 30 percent of your entire score so it's definitely
worth paying attention to but basically it just has to do with how much credit you have versus how
much you're using and I'll explain how it works so let's just say that you have a credit limit of
a thousand dollars and you end up spending seven hundred dollars throughout the month and that's
what ends up on next month's statement well because you've spent 700 out of your thousand
that's actually a seventy percent usage and this can hurt your credit score because basically you
want it to be at thirty percent or below because if you're lower than 30 percent it's basically
going to help your credit score and if you're above 30 percent then it's going to hurt your
credit score so therefore if you have a higher limit it's easier to spend a little bit more every
single month and keep that usage lower because if you had a ten thousand dollar credit limit but you
still only spent seven hundred dollars throughout the month then 700 divided by 10 000 ends up being
only seven percent usage so therefore that's going to end up helping your credit score and
that is why sometimes it's a really good thing to have a higher limit because then
it's a lot easier to keep a low usage if you're keeping your spending generally about the same
now if you want to know how you can get a credit card limit increase it's very simple
to do but it's not guaranteed but at least you can try these different steps in order to get
a limit increase the first thing you can do is to literally just call the number on the back
of your credit card and ask them for an increase because if you do end up getting an increase then
great and if they do say no big deal just try again another time the next thing you can try
is very straightforward as well but they've got to have a pretty good website here so just go
online and then look around until you can find a request for a credit limit increase button and
if they do have that button just click it fill out the information and then see what happens
you can also add what's called an authorized user to your credit card which means that you
would have a second card under someone else's name but you would be the primary name under
the account and therefore if you have two credit cards under two different names technically you
might get a higher limit just because you add an authorized user but you want to be really careful
here because if you are adding someone else and they're actually going to use the card you just
want to make sure that they're responsible with it because it could affect your credit
score and your interest rate everything like that if they are spending too much and they're
not paying you back or something like that and then the last thing you can try to get a limit
increase is to simply just spend more on your credit card and be more active with it because
if they start to see that you're spending more on the card then they might just go in and give you
a limit increase automatically but the problem here is that you don't know when it's going to
happen typically for me I see it about every year but that's in my experience now if you
really don't care about getting an increase on a specific credit card then what you can do is
just apply for another credit card because that is always going to come with its own new increase
and that technically is going to increase your credit usage because it does add all
of your credit cards together so for instance if you have two credit cards that are each 5
limits then technically you have ten thousand dollars worth of credit to spend so if you happen
to be in the market for a new credit card then I would recommend checking out credit cards.com I've
got an affiliate link for them in the description below so check them out if you have an interest
because they have a huge selection of credit cards that you can choose from and basically you can
just sift through the ones that are going to be better for your lifestyle and then you can make
your own choice but that's what I would say as far as getting another credit card is I would really
only be doing that if you don't like the credit card that you're already using and then I do want
to make it clear that if you're manually trying to get a credit card limit increase like for instance
you're calling them up or you're checking the request box online sometimes those require a
hard credit pull in order to get you the yes or the no on the increase so if you don't want to
end up getting a credit check just stick with the automatic way of doing it which would be just use
your credit card and then cross your fingers that you'll get an increase within about a year or so