Why you should lower your cash advance allowable on all Credit Cards

[tmount]

Like anyone in this game, I apply for far more credit cards than “normal” people do. All in the pursuit of points. Granted that I don’t always use every card that I apply for on a regular basis, there are still some that I do introduce to my wallet for regular use. The best advice I could offer anyone, is to lower your cash advance allowable to as low as the particular credit card issuer will allow. I called one such issuer earlier this weekend, and when I got my “credit limit” and “cash advance limit”, I balked, so, even though it wasn’t the point of the call, I asked the agent to drop my cash advance limit to just $100. I think that’s still too high, but I thought, hey, what’s the probability that I’m going to spend small dollars with my Barclay’s US Airways card (which will turn into an Aviator card).

Well, after seeing Chasing the Points’ post, I’m thinking I need to step it up a notch and just drop my available cash advance balances on any cards that I use to $0 or as close to it as possible! I use credit whenever I can, so to think that I might be charged a cash advance fee at Jamba Juice, makes me think, that the risk is just not worth taking.

So the message really is: Lower your cash advance limit to the lowest the credit card issuer will allow you to lower it to. Don’t do it tomorrow, do it today.

H/T Chasing the Points

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[nrdk]

FWIW, I would highly suggest not lowering to $0 but instead $1, as my experience with some banks means you will not be able to have a cash advance line on that card, for the life of the card, after they've lowered to $0. This can be extremely detrimental for things that have a pending status as a cash advance and post as a purchase.

 

[RightAllocations]

Had my cash advance limit set to $20 for Chase but they still processed a large cash advance for a bank account opening.

After multiple conversations they agreed to waive fees. Certainly a hassle. They offered nothing more to prevent cash advance transactions from being executed in the future.

Anyone out there know of any additional methods/tricks to block cash advance transactions from being executed at Chase (other banks)?

Thanks

 

[Eric Bogs]

I've recently funded several Citigold checking accounts with Citi and Chase cards. In each case, the technique I used to ensure the cash advance limits were set to $0 were:

1) Over live chat, ask to have the cash advance limits set to zero
2) The next day, over live chat, ask the agent what my cash advance limit is

Pretty foolproof

 

[RightAllocations]

I asked Chase for an additional option beyond the cash advance limit to prevent cash advance transactions from posting. I stated that I only wanted to use my credit card to make purchases. Received the following in secure message:

Let me share, the cash advance limit on an account is
specific for cash withdrawals and not for transactions
made using the credit card. Hence, by reducing the cash
advance limit on an account we are unable to prevent any
cash like transactions to post.​

Not sure the correctness or logic of the CSR, but cash advance charges definitely seem to still be able to post on my Chase card despite lowering the cash advance limit to $20.

 

[volker]

I've recently funded several Citigold checking accounts with Citi and Chase cards. In each case, the technique I used to ensure the cash advance limits were set to $0 were:

1) Over live chat, ask to have the cash advance limits set to zero
2) The next day, over live chat, ask the agent what my cash advance limit is

Pretty foolproof

Seems like you can't set the cash advance limit to $0 on every card. I tried it and minimum possible was $20 for my Ink Plus.