AU, How much will it help? (Score guesstimates?)

[smc733]

Hi Everyone,

So, I opened a Secured BofA in April along with a Banana Republic card (Both closed).  In May, I opened the two cards in my Sig.  My student loans are at $50k, starting September 2009.  

My Dad has a Discover card with a $25,000 limit, perfect history back to 2002.  If he adds me as an authorized user to this card, anyone have ideas where it will jump my scores to?

(Currently:  EQ:  681, TU:  671, EX:  (waiting on PSECU)).

I have ~7 inq on each report.  Any chance this pushes me past 720?  Potentially Blue Cash range?

[stan_the_man]

Before someone someone can guesstimate your score bump they probably need to know four things:

1. Length of credit history.
2. AAoA
3. Current utilization
4. Negatives from EQ and TU Fico reports

[smc733]

Great, thanks for responding.

I am a college student, so:

So LoCH:  1yr 3mo

AAoA:  9mo

Util:  1%

No baddies/negatives of any kind

[stan_the_man]

Hard to say. You have a very good chance of joining the 700 club -- where in the club is the big question -- and I think there's a really good chance of a 50+ point gain. Of course, this is a speculation.

One thing to note, Amex doesn't use Fico scores for credit approvals.

[smc733]

So I will be getting added tomorrow, and hopefully I'll get a scorewatch alert within the next week or so.  I'll definitely report the results.

Thank you for your input.  Do you think that it will still help with Amex?  It should at least push me in Zync range so they'll stop asking for a 4506-T at app (which will not be a problem once I file in April, but I didn't file last year).

[stan_the_man]

I don't actually think that you're going to be a score watch alert.

DW never got alerts when she had backdated Amex trade lines or AUs added. You would think that a new trade line reporting would trigger an alert, but that's apparently not how it works.

[haulingthescoreup]

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@stan_the_man wrote:

I don't actually think that you're going to be a score watch alert.

DW never got alerts when she had backdated Amex trade lines or AUs added. You would think that a new trade line reporting would trigger an alert, but that's apparently not how it works.

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Since the accounts don't report as "new", as in just opened, they don't trigger an alert.

It's like the cars I buy: they might be new to me, but they're not "new"!

[smc733]

Ah, I meant that if my score vaulted past my preference of 720.

I'm also having my mom add me on her Amex Green backdated to 2000, is 2 AU accounts good?

[haulingthescoreup]

You'll get more Score Watch alerts if you set your target score to your most currently known score. If you score moves away from the target, either higher or lower, you'll get an alert. So the next time that you do get an alert, immediately change your target to that number. (Strange, I know.) Anyway, if you have set your target to 720, you should get an alert when you hit or surpass 720, but nothing until then.

Two AU accounts can be good, bad, or indifferent, depending on your situation. If both are clean and older than your current AAoA, and they report $0 or very low balances, they should help. If one doesn't meet those standards, it might well hurt. If both fall short, you probably don't want them. But otherwise, FICO scoring currently treats AU accounts the same way as your own accounts.

[smc733]

So here's the deal, my AAoA is currently 8 months, with a Credit History 1yr 3mo.

Both cards are clean.  The discover as a high limit and gets rarely used, for small balances, and 9 years of age.

The Amex Green sees 1-200 balance a month, and an 11 year history.

Both have no baddies, card owners have 810 and 789 FICO scores respectively.