What 'status' allows a high credit limit?

bigstevex

When you get a credit card it goes on what you owe/earn/missed payments etc. But does it also go on age and where you live? I'm 24 but i earn £45k (same job for 6 years), 5 years of confirmed address, Never missed/paid late, Its taken me 4 years to get 1 card upto a 7K limit and when i've applied for others (before the credit crunch too) all they will offer me is ~£1000 limits. I've had plenty of various credit, i.e interest free etc and now a mortgage,

So basically how do people on here get 15K limits to start off with, I just can't figure it out

Tigger2121

As far as I can see it's length of time with the card company. I have had a RBS credit card for 20 years and now have a limit of approx £18 K. I do not earn the amount you do, I am now retired and live on a pension.

Eydon

Tigger2121 wrote: »

As far as I can see it's length of time with the card company.

May be partially to do with it, but I applied for the Amazon Mastercard just before Christmas and was given an initial credit limit of £14.5k.

I think past credit history does play a very big part. I've operated credit cards sensibly for over 20 years, but I rarely stay with the same one for long. How credit card companies determine your credit limit does seem to be a bit of a black art.

Bismarck

Hi, there doesn't seem much logic does there sometimes. My guess is it's down to past behaviour and their perception of risk....it seems to be less income based than you would expect and mine have certainly built up over time...looking back it's nearly 20 years worth in some cases so I guess I'm a known behaviour pattern...even though my circumstances are different!

I suppose a huge salary doesn't guarantee everything from their point of view but if you're seen as boring and predictable then you're less of a risk - nothing personal apart from each individual circumstance will, in theory be judged on its merits...similarly, some posts about "this has happened to me, it's unfair" don't always come in with with the full facts, nor would we ever really know why a credit decision was made in a certain way...it's usually because some factor has changed which may or may not be outside the customers control....we could all sit and argue that it's unfair that the crunch has hit us from the US but there wasn't really a lot we could do about it. You could also argue that a "correction" was due anyway, it was just a matter of when...

to sum up.....who knows!? each customer on their merits, whatever they may be!!

bigstevex

Strange isn't it! It bugs me sometimes the way that they won't/can't tell you why you can't get a higher limit etc. Oh well, just one of those things I guess! I'll just have to keep applying lol. I want to start stoozing though its annoying, i don't want cards to spend on lol

UK007BullDog

Probably because of this?

http://forums.moneysavingexpert.com/showthread.html?t=735809

EvilKumquat

I have a similar problem, a year older but same salary and I just got an egg card with only 2.5k limit, my virgin card has 5k but the interest rate just went ridiculous. The 2 cards I have that are low interest (12.9% on IF) I can't get them to raise the limit, even though I'd cancel the other cards and they'd be making way more profit from me.

If you're taking home £2700 a month having a £10k limit is reasonable imho.

Annoys me that you can't just appeal to common sense and have a conversation with the bank, joys of modern banking I guess.

GunJack

Forgive me for asking, but how does a 25-year-old get a £45k salary ?? Sorry if this comes over as being disbelieving, it's not and I'm genuinely interested. Any info appreciated, e.g. what sort of job, what sector of the economy, etc.

[Deleted User]

One of my mates was earning similar wages with Accenture at around that age. Damn those high fliers. You could also manage it easily if you were contracting in IT.

Anyhoo, i found threatening cc firms helps... I needed a high card limit for business travel (didn't want a corporate card) so as I hit my credit limit, i phoned mastercard and told them to increase it. Possibly helped that I had £12K in an ISA so they knew I was good for it. It's not good for my limit that I pay the card off in full each month.. but i've still got my £5k limit. Don't think i can spend more than that in a month

I'm 28 and I don't earn 45k. yet. Can I have a job please?

EvilKumquat

GunJack wrote: »

Forgive me for asking, but how does a 25-year-old get a £45k salary ?? Sorry if this comes over as being disbelieving, it's not and I'm genuinely interested. Any info appreciated, e.g. what sort of job, what sector of the economy, etc.

I'm an IT Technical Architect, designing IT Systems; and the supporting business process, with £500,000+ budgets. The salary for what I do is actually quite low in the market but the company is more interesting, last year I got the final stage of an interview to do it for a bank, the base salary for that was £70k. If you did the same thing on a contract basis then you would be looking at £350-£450 a day.

You can expect also expecta similar sort of wage if you;
Graduate from a top 5 Uni and go to a management consultancy, as mentioned in the post above.

Follow the Investment Bank route, join a bulge bracket bank as an analyst you'll start on £25-35k with the potential for the same again as a bonus. At 25, assuming you made the cut, you'll be looking at being an associate which is another big bump.

There's the graduate programs, I had a friend that joined Aldi as a management trainee out of University and now is an Area manager, gets about 50k a year plus an Audi as a company car. CEO of Tesco did this, apparently they'd identified him as a future CEO at 26.

Do a law degree and you might not be too far off, easily making it if you can pass the Bar, but that's not really practical so quick, Law can be a bit of a slow burner in terms of income. Not so much (relatively) to start and tons later.

My sister joined a top accountancy firm, at 28 she gets well over £80k by leading a corporate finance team.

Basically if you pick any field you can get the money it will come easier in some fields than others but generally, if you are in London, then it's easily doable, less so in other places, but still possible.

bigstevex

Civil engineering on the railway is my job, but i don't even have a degree (just a hnc for now), I will need one to get further though but luckily they are willing to pay for it and give me paid day release. The starting pay for the first 2 years was rubbish though ~£10K but then i started applying for jobs well above what i thought i could do, I guess i was just lucky i had the skills to do one of them!
Well paid jobs come with stupid amounts of stress though so its not all good lol! And i average 50 hours a week!


Just need to find the miss's a good job now, she doesn't have a clue what she wants to do though and she's 25 on ~12K