AU Question about DH's Rebuild

[Anonymous]

I hope I'm posting this on the right board. Looking for some MyFICO family advice. My DH just started rebuilding, but was already an AU on three of my cards. I'll list them all below, and am looking for input on whether each AU account could be helping or hurting his progress credit history and score-wise.

His newly acquired credit:

Capital One QS (PC'd from Platinum) $300 w/Credit Steps to come, opened early Sept

Fingerhut $800 guaranteed to go to $1200 after 5 payments, opened early Sep

AU on my accounts:

Capital One QS $3300, opened June

Discover it $1000, opened July

CreditOne $600, opened May, I will be closing this within1-3 months anyways

Just another note, the only Capital One card reporting for him on EX is my card on which he is AU. Weirdly enough, the first 6 digits of both his card and his AU card are the same. Don't know if Cap1 does that by design, but I am wondering if that is the reason his Cap1 card isn't showing up on his reports. We will be able to check his 3 bureau report next week, so we'll be able to see if his Cap1 is showing at all, or is MIA.

I don't want to hurt his progress. Would like to leave him on the Discover since the next cashback 5% will be gas and groceries after new years. Not sure if taking him off my Cap1 will hurt him since it's got a nice CL.

Any suggestions?

[Anonymous]

The only real way that making your husband an AU on any card would help his score would be if that card was old.  The classic example is where a parent makes her child an AU on a very old card.  Suddenly the 18 year old kid has a profile that is 20 years old!  It enables him to begin opening accounts of his own while still having a solid profile age and AAoA.  In your husband's case, however, the AU accounts give him barely any help at all with account age.

On the other hand, as long as you keep the reported utilization low on the cards, they don't hurt him either.

The most crucial thing is for you and your husband to make sure you understand how to control the amounts that your cards report to the bureaus, by timing when you make payments.  Do you understand how that works?  You can have very small credit limits and still have a low utilization. 

If so, all that matters is to use your cards for small things and always always pay in full.  Build up a steady history of use, statements printing, and then payment in full.  Remember that you don't get any scoring benefit from buying a lot.  A cup of coffee each month would be just as good as thousands of dollars of stuff.

Eventually your husband will want to have three major credit cards in his own name, but he can do that as makes sense in terms of his current score.