Authorized User Helping my Daughter

[PCR20]

My youngest (now 19) is trying to get started building her credit.

She has a job (over a year at the same company) and I trust her judgment 100%, so I'd like to add her to one or more cards as an Authorized User.

As of today, she has absolutely nothing as far as credit goes.

I have:

American Express

Chase Bank

Citi Bank

Juniper/Barclays

Discover

Macys

Kohls

Are any of these good for reporting an AU to the CRA's?

All of my cards are in good standing with perfect payments and plenty of CL, so any of them would be a plus for her.

If none of these are good, I'm willing to go grab a new one that would work to help get her pointed in the right direction and besides, I'd feel better knowing she has one with lots of room in case something ever came up while I was out of town on business

She lives at home and it looks like she will be for the foreseeable future

[rena347]

I added my daughter as an authorized user at age 18 (now 21) to my Barclay's/Juniper card. She received her own card and the account has been reporting to her credit report for three years now. I think that a Visa/MC/Discover card would be more helpful to your daughter to establish credit than a store card would be.

[RobertEG]

+1

Bank cards are more significant in FICO scoring than store cards.

[MarineVietVet]

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@TCarson wrote:

My youngest (now 19) is trying to get started building her credit.

She has a job (over a year at the same company) and I trust her judgment 100%, so I'd like to add her to one or more cards as an Authorized User.

As of today, she has absolutely nothing as far as credit goes.

I have:

American Express

Chase Bank

Citi Bank

Juniper/Barclays

Discover

Macys

Kohls

Are any of these good for reporting an AU to the CRA's?

All of my cards are in good standing with perfect payments and plenty of CL, so any of them would be a plus for her.

If none of these are good, I'm willing to go grab a new one that would work to help get her pointed in the right direction and besides, I'd feel better knowing she has one with lots of room in case something ever came up while I was out of town on business

She lives at home and it looks like she will be for the foreseeable future

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Of those you listed the only one I know for certain that adds AU's is Discover. You can call the others to see if they will add your daughter. Or wait for responses here.

This can help her IF the account is older than any of hers (older than her current AAoA is even better), IF the payment history is long and clean, IF the utilization is very low, and as I said IF it will report to the CRA's. She will inherit the entire history of this account. One caveat however; if this account starts to go south your credit will be affected as well. Keep that in mind.

[webhopper]

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@MarineVietVet wrote:

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@TCarson wrote:

My youngest (now 19) is trying to get started building her credit.

She has a job (over a year at the same company) and I trust her judgment 100%, so I'd like to add her to one or more cards as an Authorized User.

As of today, she has absolutely nothing as far as credit goes.

I have:

American Express

Chase Bank

Citi Bank

Juniper/Barclays

Discover

Macys

Kohls

Are any of these good for reporting an AU to the CRA's?

All of my cards are in good standing with perfect payments and plenty of CL, so any of them would be a plus for her.

If none of these are good, I'm willing to go grab a new one that would work to help get her pointed in the right direction and besides, I'd feel better knowing she has one with lots of room in case something ever came up while I was out of town on business

She lives at home and it looks like she will be for the foreseeable future

---

Of those you listed the only one I know for certain that adds AU's is Discover. You can call the others to see if they will add your daughter. Or wait for responses here.

This can help her IF the account is older than any of hers (older than her current AAoA is even better), IF the payment history is long and clean, IF the utilization is very low, and as I said IF it will report to the CRA's. She will inherit the entire history of this account. One caveat however; if this account starts to go south your credit will be affected as well. Keep that in mind.

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Chase, Discover, and Amex all report to the Bureaus. Amex would likely be most helpful, as her account will be backdated to 2012 if she ever gets an account on her own with Amex.   I have my fiance added as an AU to my Chase, Amex, and Discover, and it reports.  The main thing is that with the Amex, you have to report her SSN, and make sure that her credit report lists your address... Once your address is on her report, it will correctly line up her AU account and report it. Discover wasn't reporting on Joey's CR until Amex updated his report with my address... Once the address was in place, then Chase and Discover all chimed in and reported him as an AU

Hope this helps.

[PCR20]

Thanks for the replies.

I went ahead and put her on Discover and AmericanExpress.

After reading all of your replies, I figured that these were the best for her. 

The Discover because I think this one is her best shot at getting one later on her own.

AmEx because I have a very high CL on this one and she can use it "just in case"

Both of these cards have zero balance and the AmEx is about 10 years old with a perfect payment history, so they should help her.

As for making sure I gave her something better than what she already had, her credit reports all came back with absolutely nothing on them.

No program could generate a score because there was nothing to rate.

Thanks again for all of your suggestions!

P.S.

I guess I'll have to get her to sign up here and post her "FICO Challange".

Starting Score: 0

Current Score: 0

Goal Score: 700