One of the observations I’ve made over the years is how banks change my credit limits on my credit cards from time to time. What I’ve discovered is when banks are feeling stressed they start cutting credit lines or start asking how much people are earning to adjust those credit lines.
I’ve written posts about credit cards including this one where I got a new credit card with a $50k limit and this one on how I used credit cards to leverage status, free travel and other perks.
This month however, I have received emails from two different banks asking me to confirm my income so they can increase my credit limits although I think what they were looking for is a reason to cut my credit lines.
Why do I think they were fishing for information to cut my credit lines? There is increasing stress in private equity and I wrote about it in this post about the AI bubble popping recently.
I’ve seen this bank playbook before and it was during the Great Financial Crisis of 2008 when the exact same thing happened. Note that I’ve had these credit cards a long time and the only other time I can recall being asked to verify my income was during the 2008-2009 time frame.
Fortunately, I recently got a new job and my pay is about the same so I didn’t have any changes to report on my income but it did get me to think that I need to pick the best credit cards in my card portfolio and apply for any new ones that I have been thinking about getting before I retire because it may be difficult to get new cards with high credit limits after my income drops.
I will write a future post on my credit card portfolio for my retirement and how I plan to optimize my awards.
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Are banking pumping you for information? Let me know in the comments below.