Is being an authorized user a good idea ?

[Isaiah2990]

So pretty much I am in the process of fixing my credit.. and I have been denied for credit cards left and right..the only ones that will possibly accept me are the ones I charged off.. ( I know..I was young and dumb) I am paying off most of this stuff now and plan to be debt free by the end of January. My gf has pretty good credit a 720 fico, and she has 2 cc (Walmart Store Card, and a BoA cc) and offered for me be an AU. She is always the type to be on top of her payments. And I won't be using her cards.. I decided to go for it..will it help boost my score ? and does walmart report for AU, it only asked me for my first and last name.. we live in the same apartment complex, but live in different apartment numbers. BoA asked for my ssn along with my name.. Thanks in advance guys!

[Jutz]

There are A LOT of threads devoted to exactly how being AU can help and hurt you so I won't bother being repetitive.  With where your score is at, there's no sense in chasing cards right now.  Get the debt paid off, work in the rebuilding section to find ways of making some of that negative info disappear, and let your score recover a bit.  Stop applying for more cards, it's only going to keep the score down a few valueable points from added inquiries.  I do very much think that AU is a great stategy to create good history where there is none, but it's a very very small part in the entire scheme of things.

As far as how AU works, there should be no issue if they ask for SSN, if they don't you need to have the same address.  No idea how the apartment number will affect you, but I don't think it will screw it up too bad.