Husband & Wife Credit Score

[Anonymous]

My wife and I have all of our accounts listed jointly. Recently my wife was denied credit because her score is low. I guess we always considered my above average score as our score. How do we get our joint accounts to boost her credit score?

Thanks for you help!

[llecs]

Welcome to the forums!

If the accounts are joint right now, then those same accounts that are helping or hurting you are also doing the same to her. If there is a difference in your two scores, then she would have items on her report that you don't have that are hurting her or maybe she lacks the history like you do.

I'd recommend pulling all 3 reports for both of you and work on correcting any baddies that both of you may have.

[Miner]

To be honest, I'm not a fan of mixing credit between spouses other then home loans.  The reason is, when you face trouble, you don't have to sacrifice the scores of both of you if you can't meet all your bills.  That way, one of you may still qualify for a loan a short time after you recover.

There is no way that you can both have the exact same accounts on your reports and have different scores.  If you scores are higher, then one or both of you have some additional things on them that the other doesn't have.  Pull your 3 free anual reports for both of you and compare them.  Instead of trying to use something on your reports to fix hers, try to find what is negative on hers and get it taken care of.

[Anonymous]

Thanks for the replies. Her credit score is low because 98% of our joint accounts are not listed on her report. That really isn't much of a problem now but what if I die?

She would end up with little credit history and a low score because my history and score would die with me.

How can we combine our histories  and is there a negative effect in doing so?

Thanks

[Junejer]

Kindly ask the joint creditors to report the account history to the CRAs for her.

[marty56]

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@Miner wrote:

To be honest, I'm not a fan of mixing credit between spouses other then home loans.  The reason is, when you face trouble, you don't have to sacrifice the scores of both of you if you can't meet all your bills.  That way, one of you may still qualify for a loan a short time after you recover.

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Very well said.  Also if something happens to you, your spouse as their own credit history.