Advice on rebuild for wife

[cp94550]

Looking for some next steps/advice for my wife. Her credit profile is thin and scores are around 550 right now. I've rebuild my credit so I know it takes time and consistency, but looking for any direction.

She has:
Comenity VS $0/$100 with 4 30 day Kate's in past 12 months.
Honda auto loan paid off in 2014. Had 5+ 30 days on there.
AU on my Cap1 QS1 $800/$2000 no baddies
AU on my Cap 1 Platinum $0/$3000 no baddies (newly added her)
AU on my AX BCE $0/$2000 no baddies (newly added her)
AU on my AX Everyday $0/$5000 no baddies (newly added her)

Don't really want to get a secured card for her. Will my AU accounts help her out or is the lack of accounts solely in her name hurting her? Not looking to add a new car/loan/installment account just for the sake of improving score.

[Anonymous]

The 30 day lates are still weighing her scores down....applying now will result in denial or low SL with high Apr... After 24 months , the 30 days lates will have less effect on her scores. Some scoring models don't use AU trade lines in their scoring , but it can't hurt it.. Where it does help is AAOA (average age of account)...

[bdhu2001]

Suggest she:

• sets all accounts up on minimum auto-pay.  She should PIF, but having auto-pay on minimum will keep her from anymore lates.  
• Use a bill tracker.  I review Mint every morning and it shows all my accounts.  She can review weekly on Wednesdays and have is set up to remind her 7 days before payment is due.
• Take out a shared loan to get an open installment loan on her record.
• Garden for 12 months after the installment.

gardening will get her further away from those 30 day lates and allow her to show good payment history. Other than that, only time will heal the credit wounds she's created.

[Anonymous]

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@cp94550 wrote:
Looking for some next steps/advice for my wife. Her credit profile is thin and scores are around 550 right now. I've rebuild my credit so I know it takes time and consistency, but looking for any direction.

She has:
Comenity VS $0/$100 with 4 30 day Kate's in past 12 months.
Honda auto loan paid off in 2014. Had 5+ 30 days on there.
AU on my Cap1 QS1 $800/$2000 no baddies
AU on my Cap 1 Platinum $0/$3000 no baddies (newly added her)
AU on my AX BCE $0/$2000 no baddies (newly added her)
AU on my AX Everyday $0/$5000 no baddies (newly added her)

Don't really want to get a secured card for her. Will my AU accounts help her out or is the lack of accounts solely in her name hurting her? Not looking to add a new car/loan/installment account just for the sake of improving score.

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Open a couple of Cap One cards in her name. AU accounts are not enough, IMHO. In the FICO 8 models, much of the AU account value has been discounted.

[Anonymous]

I put my fiance as AU and its helped tremendously. I also cosigned a small $500 loan thru our credit union and that helps a lot too.

[RobertEG]

Value of AU accounts varies dependent upon the degree of manual review conducted by a prospecitve lendor if/when she applies for credit.

The fact is that inclusion of AU accounts in her credit report means her score is no longer, by definition, representative of only her own credit history.

Creditors have no way to back out the AUs and produce a score that represents only her own risk.  Thus, if a prospective creditor does a manual review and sees that the score is based in part on accounts that are not her own history, they may discount the value of the score in thier decision making.

One cannot predict whether the AU will hurt or help, even if it produces a positive score impact.

Will she be appling for new credit for which the creditor is likely to do a manual review (usually higher amounts of credit)?