Will Going Over The Credit Limit One Time Hurt Score Long Term?

Question

I have a flexible spending Chase Sapphire preferred card that has a limit of $7000.  I don't know when, but according to my credit report it shows that my high balance at one point in time was at $11k - I'm guessing this was several several months ago if not over a year. I don't ever keep my balance that high, and I'm sure it was only at that balance for 24-48 hours, and Chase just happened to report to the CB's the day the balance was that high (lucky me).  Currently my balance is really low , around $150. I usually keep the balance at less than $500 at any one time (and if it goes over that, I pay it down several times a month just in case).  Anyway, my lender told me that if I raised my credit limit to around $15k (or at least higher than the $11k balance it had at one time), it would raise my score considerably because it would show that I never went above the limit. So I called Chase, and luckily I was able to get the limit raised to about $13k. I was pre-approved for it, so they did not need to run my credit (good news I guess). My question is - should I expect a score increase just because the one time high blaance of $11k is now under my new $13k limit (instead of over the $7k limit it had). I thought I knew a lot about how credit scores worked, but this is new to me. Is the lender blowing smoke or is this actually a normal thing to expect? Thx

Answer 1

CH-7-Rebuilding wrote:
Do you see that smoke in the air?  Yep, your lender has no idea what they are talking about. Lots of people have signature cards that have, say, a 5K limit, and might have a 20K high credit.  That is what a signature card is for!  You just have to pay off the amount over the credit limit when the bill comes in. That high credit amount above the limit had no effect on your FICO score.  The raising of the limit might impact your score if it lowers your current utilization, but otherwise it should not matter as far as FICO.  It will help getting higher limits with other lenders, though.   bingo!    many of us move limits or have been CLD during the crunch and have "high balance" many times greater than our CL.    lender is a dummy.