I did a little more reading, and it looks like I wasn't quite correct in thinking that the CARD act would let a person use their spouse's income on any individual cc app. The original 2009 CARD act disallowed cc lenders from considering anything other than the individual appliant's income, but this was later thought to be unfair to non-working spouses and parters. In 2013 the act was amended to allow lenders to consider income from a spouse and or other member of the applicant's household if the applicant was over 21 and had reasonable access to that income, but it seems to be at their own discression whether they choose to do so. The small CU I was talking to and apparently Navy Federal have just chosen not to. So, if I have things correctly now, whether you can include your husband's income on a cc app will vary by lender, though most of the big banks' apps will state explicitly that you can.
@Cjethompson2017 wrote:@Slabenstein I called navy federal today and they told me I can include my spouses income if we have a joint account and his checks also go into that account.
Awesome. My spouse and I may be looking at their cards next year, so that's good to know.
@Cjethompson2017 wrote:What happens when I apply and include my spouses income, and then he wants to apply on his own? Or does adding him as an AU get the same benefit credit wise???
If he meets the same requirements for your income that the lender uses in determining whether you can include his, then he should be able to use yours as well (e.g. for Navy, if you also deposit your paychecks into that joint account). But if you want to be sure I would ask that lender.
Regarding AUs, adding someone as an authorized user to your credit line can benefit them, but first the anti-abuse algorithm in FICO8 has to recognize that you're part of the same household. I have my spouse as AU on my Discover, and it does seem to be factoring into their score, but idk what criteria it uses to determine whether it will. (Maybe shared address history, since that's about the only thing available to it?) Also, not all issuers will report a tradeline for an AU to the bureaus, so you want to make sure the particular card in question does. But, ideally, if you want adding someone as an AU to have a positive impact on their score, you want it to be an aged account with a large limit (and ofc positive payment history). That way it helps with utilization and account age metrics.