Rebuilding

[Anonymous]

Hi all,

I've finally decided to start cleaning up my report. I'll spare the background of my sob story and cut to the chase:

My fiancee has excellent credit, and has offered to put me on her AMEX, Citi MC, and another card as an authorized user. Something like $50K in available credit. I have lived a cash only lifestyle for the past 4 years. I have about $2K worth of collections debt on like 7 accounts (most falling off in about 2 years,) and no positive history at the moment. I think my experian fico is around 520.

Since we are not married yet, would that still benefit me? We have lived together for about 2 and half years. 

Any help is appreciated!

[Anonymous]

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@Anonymous wrote:

Hi all,

I've finally decided to start cleaning up my report. I'll spare the background of my sob story and cut to the chase:

My fiancee has excellent credit, and has offered to put me on her AMEX, Citi MC, and another card as an authorized user. Something like $50K in available credit. I have lived a cash only lifestyle for the past 4 years. I have about $2K worth of collections debt on like 7 accounts (most falling off in about 2 years,) and no positive history at the moment. I think my experian fico is around 520.

Since we are not married yet, would that still benefit me? We have lived together for about 2 and half years. 

Any help is appreciated!

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Welcome to the myFico forums!

Yes, it would help if you were an AU on her accounts, provided the UTI is relatively low, as in under 30%,preferably under 10%.

I would recommend you try to get three CCs on your own, as some places may not consider AU accounts in your profile.

Let your scores settle after being added as an AU and try for CCs gradually.

If your scores are still in the 500s, consider a secured CC.

An excellent place to start is the State Department Federal CU.  You can join for free, if you dont otherwise qualify, by first joining the American Consumer Council (ACC).  You can join ACC using a coupon code of 'consumer' for free.  After you join SDFCU, you can get a secured loan for as low as 250 for 36 months at low interest.  Take the proceeds of the loan and use it as collateral for a 250 secured CC.  Use the CC as any other one.  The entire process can be completed without a HP.  Be aware that they use the Chex System, but will still accept members if it is settled.  The secured loan will also help satisfy the 'credit mix' portion of the Fico scoring, so potential for more points that way.

Another secured CC without a HP is from OpenSky. 

At this point, it doesnt matter if the CC is secured or not and it doesnt matter what the CL is.  The point is to establish that you can manage CCs and that they will report to all three bureaus.

The Fico scoiring system looks for three or more CCs.  Each time I opened a CC for the first three, I got a score bump of 10 to 20 points.

HTH

[Anonymous]

Great! Thank you so much!

[RobertEG]

During rebuilding, the consumer is usually applying for relatively small amounts of credit that often to not involve a more detailed manual reveiw by the creditor.

Having score inflation by presence of an AU accuont of another can thus be a benefit.

As the amount and tems of credit become better, creditors are more apt to conduct a more detailed manual review of the consumer's credit report.

Seeing the presence of an AU notifices them that the score is not representative of only the consumer's own history, and they have no way to back out the effects of the AU.  Thus, it could become an issue in their approval process.

One should strive to remove AUs once they have built their own, solid history.  However, they are a good assistance in building/rebuilding.

As an aside,, many credtiors are limiting the grant of AU status only to close family members.  You could, depending upon the creditor, find that they will not report an AU to a non-family member's credit report.