Using a spouse's credit to help mine.

[Anonymous]

Background:  I filed for Chap 7 a few years back.  It cleared in April of 2009.  I've been good since then.  A few months ago I got married.  Currently I have two non-secured cards.  A Reward Zone Mastercard and an Orchard Bank one.  Both only have $300 CL's which do NOT help my debit and credit ratio even though I keep them under 10% utilization or so.  We also have a loan from FMC on a new car, both our names are on the loan but her's is first on the loan.

My wife as significantly better credit then I do.  She gets offers for 0% cards in the mail all the time.  Would it help me if we applied for a joint card?  Unless my score drags her down a lot, I think we would end up with a $1000-$2000 CL card.  Would it be better if she called in an added me to one of her existsing cards?  She's had her SW Airlines card for several years now.

Thanks!

[Creditaddict]

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@Anonymous wrote:

Background:  I filed for Chap 7 a few years back.  It cleared in April of 2009.  I've been good since then.  A few months ago I got married.  Currently I have two non-secured cards.  A Reward Zone Mastercard and an Orchard Bank one.  Both only have $300 CL's which do NOT help my debit and credit ratio even though I keep them under 10% utilization or so.  We also have a loan from FMC on a new car, both our names are on the loan but her's is first on the loan.

My wife as significantly better credit then I do.  She gets offers for 0% cards in the mail all the time.  Would it help me if we applied for a joint card?  Unless my score drags her down a lot, I think we would end up with a $1000-$2000 CL card.  Would it be better if she called in an added me to one of her existsing cards?  She's had her SW Airlines card for several years now.

Thanks!

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If you do keep these cards below 9% reporting balance and probably only 1 reporting a balance each month, it will help you regardless of the CL.

However, her SW card is Chase, she can call and request a form be mailed to make the account joint, Chase adds joint status to already opened accounts without even a credit check from my experience.  If that has a nice CL and is also kept below 9% that would help you in the future with higher CL's most likely.

The car should also help.

what's bringing down your scores?

[Anonymous]

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what's bringing down your scores?

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My two cards were maxed out until recently.  After paying them off it jumped up quite a bit.  My chapter 7 is still pretty recent and it had a ton of stuff on it.  I also have some student loans, but they are current.  From my understanding Stundent loans don't help or hurt your credit though (unless they are late).  I think one of the main things hurting me is a large amount of hard pulls.  When I first got out of BK I thought I HAD to have a CC to restore my credit.  I applied a lot of places, resulting in 15+ pulls.

I'm hoping after the car loan gets some age behind it and I can keep the cards paid off hopefully I'll get a nice bump once those hard pulls clear.