adding my son to my credit card to help him build better credit

[Anonymous]

I'm wondering if by adding my son (who has less than stellar credit (due to issues 4+ yrs ago)) to my credit card as an authorized user it would hurt my credit score.  I believe it would help him. 

[haulingthescoreup]

It can't hurt you, unless he uses a card (or the account number online) to run up your balance, and neither of you can pay it.

[Anonymous]

Thank you!  It will be beneficial to him, right?  My credit score is very good.

[haulingthescoreup]

As long as the card has a very low or $0 balance reporting, no baddies, ideally a decent amount of age --yes, it should help.

[Anonymous]

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@Anonymous wrote:
I'm wondering if by adding my son (who has less than stellar credit (due to issues 4+ yrs ago)) to my credit card as an authorized user it would hurt my credit score.  I believe it would help him. 

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Yes it is helpful to the AU as long as the account stays nice and healthy and you trust them not to run up a balance and inadvertantly sabotage it. I did this for a friend and my sister and it worked for them really well as I had really good 800 credit at the time and then when they got on their own, removed them and then of course my own tanked for health reason but its coming back with a vengence.

[Anonymous]

If I added my bf as an AU to my citi card (only ~8 months old) and his oldest TL is 18 months old, would you expect to see any change in his scores? My citi card has a limit of $10,100 and his largest CC CL is only $750. His credit file consists of a mortgage, paid/closed auto loan (that's the oldest TL), a CapOne card and soon to be a 99/500 BoA card. Any thoughts?

Also, in general is it a good/bad idea to add someone as an AU to a high-limit card when their credit report looks like his does? Just wondering what effect, if any, the huge disparity in CLs might have. Thanks!

[Anonymous]

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@Anonymous wrote:

If I added my bf as an AU to my citi card (only ~8 months old) and his oldest TL is 18 months old, would you expect to see any change in his scores? My citi card has a limit of $10,100 and his largest CC CL is only $750. His credit file consists of a mortgage, paid/closed auto loan (that's the oldest TL), a CapOne card and soon to be a 99/500 BoA card. Any thoughts?

Also, in general is it a good/bad idea to add someone as an AU to a high-limit card when their credit report looks like his does? Just wondering what effect, if any, the huge disparity in CLs might have. Thanks!

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Likely not right away but within a few cycles with extended age and usage and good reporting (no baddies or high util) then yes you can expect it to improve but don't expect any giant leaps and bounds anytime soon. I don't know if the CL question plays a big part but I may be wrong, although the better cards he is part of, the better it will look for him since it will play a bigger part in increasing the gab between debt to credit ratio. This will bring his overall util down and that should help. So in theory, the bigger the CL he is part of, the better it will be for him but that's assuming the util of those cards is low to have a benefit. IMO.

[haulingthescoreup]

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pez478 wrote:

If I added my bf as an AU to my citi card (only ~8 months old) and his oldest TL is 18 months old, would you expect to see any change in his scores? My citi card has a limit of $10,100 and his largest CC CL is only $750. His credit file consists of a mortgage, paid/closed auto loan (that's the oldest TL), a CapOne card and soon to be a 99/500 BoA card. Any thoughts?

Also, in general is it a good/bad idea to add someone as an AU to a high-limit card when their credit report looks like his does? Just wondering what effect, if any, the huge disparity in CLs might have. Thanks!

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Ideally, an AU card would be as old or older than the person's AAoA (average age of accounts.) If it's younger, there's a risk of decreasing their AAoA.

High(er) CL's are only helpful if the AU has balances reporting. If they have $3K total CL with $10 reporting at any given time, having their total CL jump to $13K isn't going to appreciably change anything. But the simple presence of a high-CL card among low-CL ones isn't a problem. The card responsibility shows up as "authorized user" anyway, so it's not like it's giving away a secret.

That being said, if the AU has had problems in the past, or is just brand new to credit, simply having another TL (tradeline; credit account) reporting with clean history month after month helps in the long run.