Credit reports

[Irving]

If you don't have good control, or you're not actively trying to build credit, that's a fine thing to do. However your debt to availability ratio is one of five factors in building your credit score. If you are trying to build credit and you're at a stage where it's good enough to get increases, you should do so. Having debt isn't a problem, having a bad debt ratio is. So let's say you owe $4,000 on your $5,000 limit, and are only knocking down $100 a month. If you can get your limit to $10,000, you just went from 80% credit to debt, down to 40% credit to debt in a single phone call. Paying off $100/mo in principle, that same jump would take you 20 months.