Should I or Should I Not

[Harvey26]

Ok so I have recently started establishing credit and I am looking at getting a car and my mom got pre approved for an auto loan with an 1.49 interest rate at local credit union and her scores are in the 800s across the board and I was going to get on the loan to also to help build my credit because theoretically I will be paying for the car myself the loan is going to be about $5000.. but I check CK and my score now is around 670 and if I got added to the loan it would drop to about a 630 as they said they would have to check my credit to see if i quailify to be on the loan and I was just wondering if that would be a good idea in the long run or not..

Current Scores: 668 TU  667 EQ  EX: ?? 6 months hasnt hit

[Anonymous]

Your scores will often take a small hit when you establish a new loan however having an installment loan will increase your scores in the long run (just a few months in most cases).  I would suggest you join your mom's credit union and apply for an auto loan on your own, your principle is going to be low enough that the point or two higher APR you will pay on your own won't add up to be a whole lot.  Of course one option is to apply with your mom as the co-signer, that will allow you to take advantage of her scores while building yours.   Also I doubt you will take more than a 5-6 point hit from applying, those simulators are not very accurate.

[StartingOver10]

OP, before you apply with the CU pull your actual FICO scores here first so you have an idea of your score before you apply.  The scores Credit Karma uses are Vantage 3.0 scores and not FICO. I can tell you that there is a huge difference between the scores (for me there is 83 points between the vantage vs fico) and Vantage scores tend to run much lower. Others on here have had Vantage scores run much higher. In any event, it is extremely unlikely that your CU uses Vantage scoring at all.

Do you have enough income to support the loan?  Looking at DTI here....