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First off - Mods if this is in the wrong place then please can you move to the right forum, thanks!
Currently I am an AU on one of my DHs cards (Chase) which has been open for 2 years. Although it has 40% Utl it has no late payments and that is still older than my accounts (only 1 year as my oldest own card)
My scores have improved a lot and are better than my husbands at this point (adding this AU on chase improved my scores by about 10 points) - he has another older account with Cap One which is 8 years old, currently his balance on it is $1200 with a $2000 limit and it has one late from Sep 2007 (which I have debated as incorrect with Cap one as I made a payment on the account in Oct before the cut off date).
With this high utl and (possibly) a late is it still an idea to add me to the card just to increase the age of my accounts - it's currently a negative when i pull my fico reports.
Or should I wait until I can pay that balance down to a $200 and then add me as an AU?
@haulingthescoreup wrote:
I would wait until the balance is under control AND the late is gone.
Do you have any lates of your own? I would never, ever willingly add another one to my own collection (all incurred by me.)
Nope, none of my own.
I am really hoping that I can get that late deleted (would help my husband a lot)
Other than that late and the BofA ones (which I am never going to get rid of until after I have paid off the remaining $4000 left on that account) I have managed to get his other 12 lates taken off based on GW.
I have two small balances of his that I want to pay down first (one is the Chase balance) which total less than $1000 to get him down to more cards with a 0 balance and then I plan on paying that one off next so that his utl is better anyway. I guess I can wait the couple of months it would take for me to do that.
( i really want those extra 6 and 9 points to get my two scores up to 700 )
Well I have the following cards of my own:
Cap One $1500 limit, $100 balance
Lane Bryant $300 limit, $0 balance
Macys $1000 limit (that was $100 a month ago - yay - tho not reporting new limit yet), $0 balance
(just closed my Orchard bank card which was a secured $250 limit with $0 balance and will be getting a check in the next 60 days sometime for the $250... it's a ridiculous length of time to have to wait for the check)
Then the Chase card $1020 limit, $400 balance.
So currently credit available is $ $3820 with $500 balance (13%)
I am getting a refund check from NY State for taxes I paid whilst living there for $250 and the check back from Orchard for $250 - whenever those come in the plan is to pay off everything but $10 from the cap one card to bring my utl down to almost 0.
On top of all that tho I have a car loan which reports to all 3 and has a balance of $13,000 - original loan amount was $16000 in October and I have made some extra payments - I stopped those for now tho so I could apply all the money to paying down DHs existing $10000 of credit debt *sigh*
@haulingthescoreup wrote:
Getting to 9% or lower will probably help.
Do you know your AAoA in months? Have you hit one year yet? That will help, too.
*Maybe* having a $0 balance on your Cap One, so that only the Chase has a balance, would help, although that might not be much of an issue for young history profiles.
What are the negatives, in order, on your FICO reports (screen two)? --besides short history and seeking credit, lol.
Hurting your score:
Short Account History (oldest account 2years (the chase one) AAoA 1 year)
High Credit Useage (15%)
Recently Been looking for credit (2 inquiries in past year)
Positives:
Number of missed payments 0
Recent use of credit cards
Moderate number of credit cards (3) - this one I don't understand? I have Macys, Chase, Cap One, Orchard, Lane Bryant - it says it includes store cards, bank cards and closed accounts so I should have 5?
I wonder why it is only saying 3 cards :/
@haulingthescoreup wrote:
Your husband's other card is attractive for the age, I understand, but no way do you want to add that high util and late to what you have now. Also, I think Cap One reports AU's, but I'm not sure, so you'd definitely want to know that.
They told me they did (I added him to my Cap one card to decrease his util since I don't really keep a balance on there generally and it won't really effect his AAoA but it hasn't reported yet- this is the first month he has been on there tho)
And yeah, that was really why I wanted to check - I thought that a late may do some damage even if it is over 18 months old.. I will keep trying to get them to take it off and chipping away at that balance and then get myself on there once I have acheived all of those!
Hopefully I should have my balance and his smaller ones paid off this month and then can go to work on the balance on there in June.
Thank you so much hauling for taking the time to reply.