Utilization Primary & Authorized Card Totals or just Primary Card Totals?

[smittyb]

Perhaps this has been discussed somewhere on the forums and I haven’t found it…

But I want to talk about credit card utilization and how It works.

I subscribe to both Experian & MyFico and get my FICO 8 reports from them.

My wife and I have several credit cards, some are just our private/solo cards and somewhere we are authorized users on the other persons’ cards.

So for example:

My wife has 5 primary credit cards each with $2,000 in credit so $10,000 total

I am an authorized user on 4 and she has 1 solo account.

I have 5 primary credit cards each with $2,000 in credit so $10,000 total.

She is an Authorized user on 2 and I have 3 solo accounts.

So combined utilization.…

My wife has $18,000 Credit with both of our accounts.(10K primary & 8K as an Authorized user)

I have $14,000 credit with both of our accounts. (10k primary + 4K as an Authorized user)

Of those cards, we each have some cards with $0 balance and some with various other amounts.

——————

Experian’s reports on their website … when reporting credit utilization adds up all credit on my Primary cards and my Authorized user cards. I have $X out of $14,000 when calculating credit utilization.

BUT

MyFICO…. ignores my Authorized user cards and just displays the utilization on my Primary cards.

So it says I have $X out of $10,000 when calculating credit utilization.

So which way do you think credit bureaus use to determine utilization?

Just your Primary credit cards total  OR  Primary & authorized user  accounts? OR both?

[Anonymous]

I'd be very interested in this as well. I'm planning to add my wife as an authorized user on my high limit amex to help her utilization level reduce but can't find much info on whether this strategy could work. 

[Anonymous]

You cannot tell anything from the CMS. Actually if you look into different spots, Experian shows your utilization with and without AU cards, you just have to look at another spot.

The AU cards undoubtedly count towards the mortgage scores. Starting with version 8 and forward they included an anti-abuse algorithm. If it counts as a legitimate AU it counts towards your utilization on the algorithm, if not, it does not.

So how can you tell? have all AUs report $0. If you experience the all zero penalty and see your score go down, then it’s counting and when a balance reported again, the score will go back up.

If all AU cards reporting zero does not cause a drop, it’s not counting for the algorithm for version 8 and forward and therefore not towards utilization.

[Anonymous]

As a matter of fact @TekkenQQ7 just experienced this, so we know his counts.

[Anonymous]

https://ficoforums.myfico.com/t5/Understanding-FICO-Scoring/bureau-delay-or-odd-experience/m-p/60293...