Helping my sister rebuild

Anonymous · ‎03-23-2018

Hello eveyone!

Recently my sister has asked for some help getting her finances back on track. She's in it pretty bad but we've got her lined out with a budget that she can manage and she's feeling pretty good about it. Her Fako scores from CK are both 472 so she's got a long way to go. Haven't tried to get a FICO score yet but we plan to. No open revolving credit. 2-3 CO depending on the CRA. An auto loan in repossession (she has come to an agreement with USAA. Not sure how it'll be reported once paid). All accounts that were in good standing are closed. No open revolving credit.

With all that being said, my question is, would it help her to add her as an AU on my oldest account or two? My two oldest accounts I could add her on are 2yrs6mo and 1yr4mo. My oldest account is running a 29% balance right now due to some weird circumstances, but normally is at 0% UTL. Any advice is much appreciated.

thornback · ‎03-23-2018

An AU account will only help as far as extending credit age, and may offer a bit of a score boost based on that - it will not eliminate the "no revolving accounts" negative reason code. It's a good idea, but she will also need to get an account in her name to benefit from having an active revolving account to build her own revolving credit history. So not to risk denials, have her go for the secured Open Sky credit card - no credit checks, non-predatory, and they report to all 3 bureaus. She only needs a small limit -- $200 would be fine. Report less than 8.9% of the limit each month and pay in full. Good luck!

Edit: If you do decide to add her as an AU -- make sure your card company will give her the same open date as you -- some card companies will add an AU as a new account - not backdating the card open date to match that of the primary card holder. There's no point in adding her if she won't benefit from the account age.

Personal Aphorism:"Forget What You Feel, Remember What You Deserve"

Starting FICO 8s | 09/2017: EX 641 ✦ EQ 634 ✦ TU 647
Current FICO 8s | 04/2022: EX 796 ✦ EQ 793 ✦ TU 790
Current FICO 9s | 04/2022: EX 790 ✦ EQ 788 ✦ TU 782
2022 Goal Score | 800s

My AAoA: 4.6 years not incl. AU / 4.9 years incl. AU
My AoOA: 9.2 years not incl. AU / 11.2 years incl. AU
Inquiries: EX 0/12 ✦ EQ 0/12 ✦ TU 0/12
Report Status: Clean
Garden Status:

Without patience, we will learn less in life. We will see less. We will feel less. We will hear less. Ironically, rush and more usually mean less.

Anonymous · ‎03-24-2018

@thornbackwrote:
An AU account will only help as far as extending credit age, and may offer a bit of a score boost based on that - it will not eliminate the "no revolving accounts" negative reason code. It's a good idea, but she will also need to get an account in her name to benefit from having an active revolving account to build her own revolving credit history. So not to risk denials, have her go for the secured Open Sky credit card - no credit checks, non-predatory, and they report to all 3 bureaus. She only needs a small limit -- $200 would be fine. Report less than 8.9% of the limit each month and pay in full. Good luck!

Edit: If you do decide to add her as an AU -- make sure your card company will give her the same open date as you -- some card companies will add an AU as a new account - not backdating the card open date to match that of the primary card holder. There's no point in adding her if she won't benefit from the account age.

Yeah it's definitely just something we would use as a springboard to her getting her own accounts. Definitely looking at Open Sky, then Capital One then Discover I think.

Also good call on making sure the card issuer will report from my opening date. Any idea if Capital One does that? From what I've read, it seems like they report the orginal opening date, but haven't found someone definitely saying that.

Thanks for the response. She's got a long road ahead of her. I'm sure we'll find this forum as useful for her as I did for my rebuild.