Tripling credit lines and lowe

I started to do credit repair in 94. Time has cleaned up my credit reports and I have been able to get a few items removed like that pesky parking ticket I got in Seattle that went to collection. I have never been late or overlimit since 94.

Anyway, I thought I would chart the effect of improved credit on limits and APRs. I had a bunch of negatives back then including a charge off and lots of collections for small stuff. My reports now are clean.

APRs are averaged for the time period shown but are not weighted based on the credit limit of each card--there is a limit to how much time I want to put into this! The APRs do not factor in retail cards. These tend to be high for everybody so their inclusion would be meaningless. Here are the stats:

5/94 Credit limits $1,100 19.65 APR
5/95 Credit limits $2,600 20.82
5/96 Credit limits $4,100 18.65
5/97 Credit limits $9,725 17.25
5/98 Credit limits $14,000 18.53
5/99 Credit limits $16,000 19.5
3/00 Began reading this board
5/00 Credit limits $19,400 18.55
2/01 Credit limits $59,900 15.61

All cards subprime through 5/00.

The CL jump after 5/00 resulted from establshing several new accounts as well as CL increases on older accounts. The bad stuff had fallen off by 5/00. Also during this time, two accounts with CLs totaling $5300 were closed so they are not included in the 2/01 total.

Before getting the huge credit increases that came after 5/00, I had begun drastically reducing balances so that by the time I opened new accounts, my utilzation ratio was in the 20-30% range. Other than paying on time, I think this is key to getting substantial increases and better APRs.

Anyway, I have to thank the contributors to this board for giving me valuable information that has helped me to get much better credit deals. I am glad to be out of subprime hell--finally.