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My bf and I moved in together this year, and we plan on getting married one day. Our finances are completely separate and will remain so until we get married. We are both in our late twenties and I guess you could say we are at two different places financially. I've got a good job that I've been at for a few years and since then I've taken steps to reduce my own debt and develop a healthy credit history. My bf on the other hand isn't really happy with his job and is planning on going back to school. Like myself he's made some credit mistakes when he was younger but with the pay at his current job, unlike me, he hasn't had the money to be able to try and pay/settle some of those blemishes that remain on his credit report. He has student loans reporting and a car loan, but no open credit card on his account. So I've decided to add him on to two of my accounts as an authorized user so that he has some open credit card accounts with good history on his report. I know this will help his score, but is it sufficient enough that at some point he will be able to open an account in his own name? Do creditors look at authorized user accounts on your report differently than if the account was solely yours? Or should he also get a secured credit card account in his name?
Obviously I know getting the negative stuff off will help quite a bit, which I've been helping him try to work on....but want to try to maximize the amount of positive stuff he can do now as well to try to get the best results.
Jen,
I see noone has answered your question yet, so I'll give it a wag.
From what I've read, being an AU helps with AAoA and utilization, but I'm not sure it's enough to help him eventually secure his own cc. My reasoning behind this is because the ccc doesn't know if he's using or paying on the card, so it doesn't necesarily help show responsible use of credit. However, that's just my guess and I could well be wrong.
Having him get his own secured card (or two) would DEFINITELY help his score, though he might take a slight dip initially for the HP, new acct and AAoA. But if he currently has no credit cards, it probably won't even take that initial dip.
Also, you may want to try posting your question again in the 'rebuilding' section. Lots of people on there are much more knowledgeable on AU accts than I am.
Hope that helps some.
Thanks for the advice! Yea I'm sure it will help overall as he has nothing open....but just not sure if it is enough to help him get his own at some point. Good call I will repost this over on the rebuilding thread and see if I get more responses.
Locked thread to direct others here:
http://ficoforums.myfico.com/t5/Rebuilding-Your-Credit/Helping-BF-rebuild-credit/m-p/1685922#M216579