Effects of removing AU's on spouses accounts after credit rebuild?

[Divaofsongs]

This is sort of a unique question, so I hope I am in the right section of the forums. It is regarding the effects of AU tradelines reporting on spouses CR's and whether there will be an effect on our AAoA, FICO scores, and utilization percentage if we change them now. Here is the deal:

Background: My hubby and I have been rebuilding our credit since our chapter 7 bk that was discharged in Aug of 2013. Since then, we have done pretty well and are now at the point where we plan to keep the cards we have and not add any more for at least another 2 years. We started out by making each other an AU on each other's CC's because I thought that would help us. Not sure if it actually made a difference or not but we both now have over $25k in unsecured credit in each of our names individually and about $50k with our individual tradelines and AU tradelines combined. We each have 3 major credit cards with credit limits averaging $4000-$5000 on each card, and a few store cards such as Walmart, Lowe's, Amazon and HSN with an average of $2000-$3000 credit limits on each card. Our FICO scores are now in the high 600's to low 700's. These are my questions:

1. I am thinking of removing each other as AU's on all of our accounts so that only our individual accounts are being reported on our CR's. Does anyone know if doing this will affect our AAoA or is AAOA only calculated on individual accounts and not individual and AU accounts combined.
   
   
2. Will this affect our individual FICO scores in any way?
   
   
3. Will this affect our utilization percentage or is that only calculated using individual accounts? We each have kept our total utilization to less than 7% on all our accounts combined and individually so I am not really worried about this too much. I would just like to know for knowledge sake. 

I appreciate any input and advice. 

[Barry]

---

@Divaofsongs wrote:

This is sort of a unique question, so I hope I am in the right section of the forums. It is regarding the effects of AU tradelines reporting on spouses CR's and whether there will be an effect on our AAoA, FICO scores, and utilization percentage if we change them now. Here is the deal:

Background: My hubby and I have been rebuilding our credit since our chapter 7 bk that was discharged in Aug of 2013. Since then, we have done pretty well and are now at the point where we plan to keep the cards we have and not add any more for at least another 2 years. We started out by making each other an AU on each other's CC's because I thought that would help us. Not sure if it actually made a difference or not but we both now have over $25k in unsecured credit in each of our names individually and about $50k with our individual tradelines and AU tradelines combined. We each have 3 major credit cards with credit limits averaging $4000-$5000 on each card, and a few store cards such as Walmart, Lowe's, Amazon and HSN with an average of $2000-$3000 credit limits on each card. Our FICO scores are now in the high 600's to low 700's. These are my questions:

1. I am thinking of removing each other as AU's on all of our accounts so that only our individual accounts are being reported on our CR's. Does anyone know if doing this will affect our AAoA or is AAOA only calculated on individual accounts and not individual and AU accounts combined. Removing any cards - individual or AU - could affect your AAoA, as it's calculated on all accounts on your credit report (excluding collections and public records).
   
   
2. Will this affect our individual FICO scores in any way? It very well could, potentially in all categories of scoring: payment history, amounts owed (includes utilization), length of history (includes AAoA), new accounts, and types of credit. Think of AUs as being no different to the score (except in the newest models when the entire report is made up of AUs) than accounts held individually or jointly.
   
   
3. Will this affect our utilization percentage or is that only calculated using individual accounts? We each have kept our total utilization to less than 7% on all our accounts combined and individually so I am not really worried about this too much. I would just like to know for knowledge sake. It could, since again, your utilization includes cards AU cards on your report. Again, AUs are included in your util. and I see no good reason to remove them Those are some pretty good scores for only being 1.5 years out of BK, so why mess with removing anything reporting positively?

I appreciate any input and advice. 

---

[takeshi74]

There's nothing really unique here.  If the creditor and scoring model consider accounts where on is an AU then the account factors in just like any other account.  For creditors and scoring models that do not there is no impact since the account was not considered in the first place.

Have you done the math to determine the potential change to AAoA and utilization?

[Barry]

---

@takeshi74 wrote:

There's nothing really unique here.  If the creditor and scoring model consider accounts where on is an AU then the account factors in just like any other account.  For creditors and scoring models that do not there is no impact since the account was not considered in the first place.

Have you done the math to determine the potential change to AAoA and utilization?

---

Good idea to suggest doing the math, takeshi74. And you're right that, theoretically, if it's not considered in the first place it won't matter when it's gone. However, in reality all score models - not just FICO but other scores - include AUs to some degree.