AU account effect on score.

[pkenn]

Hello everyone

i had a question...

ive spent the last few months following advice here and have bumped my scores 60-70 pts.  I have about 10 cc's

half of which are at $0, two store cards at 28% and pay pal at 48% and one baddy co frome a few years ago showing $0.

I have a lot of available credit and my oldest account is 21 years but 5-6 from 2013 on.  So here is the question.  My wife has me as an AU and her balance is showing $16k on a $21k limit .

if that was not on my report id be btwn 9-10% usage.
Her card is from 2004 so only a few years younger than my oldest account and one of the oldest.

What would happen if i had her remove me as AU? Would i take an avg age hit?

would it go up because utilization drops

or best to divert $ to it to lower its utilization?

thanks for everyones time!

[CH-7-Mission-Accomplished]

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@pkenn wrote:

Hello everyone

i had a question...

ive spent the last few months following advice here and have bumped my scores 60-70 pts.  I have about 10 cc's

half of which are at $0, two store cards at 28% and pay pal at 48% and one baddy co frome a few years ago showing $0.

I have a lot of available credit and my oldest account is 21 years but 5-6 from 2013 on.  So here is the question.  My wife has me as an AU and her balance is showing $16k on a $21k limit .

if that was not on my report id be btwn 9-10% usage.
Her card is from 2004 so only a few years younger than my oldest account and one of the oldest.

What would happen if i had her remove me as AU? Would i take an avg age hit?

would it go up because utilization drops

or best to divert $ to it to lower its utilization?

thanks for everyones time!

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Ask her to have youy removed as an AU (it will report is "terminated," which is correct).   The AU account should stay on your report and the age will count towards AAofA, but the balance will zero out.    She can add you back at any time.  

[pkenn]

Really? Wow i never heard of the "terminated" bit, i thought they always disapeared. 

[CH-7-Mission-Accomplished]

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@pkenn wrote:

Really? Wow i never heard of the "terminated" bit, i thought they always disapeared. 

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I have a bunch of old AU accounts with my spouse, my best friend and my parents.   Some are 30 years old.   They work.    

[W261w261]

One thing - I added myself as an AU to my wife's Bloomies and Nordstrom accounts. Perfect payment history and 41 years and 21 years age.  So good there.  My AAoA took a nice increase.  In the process of speaking with one of the store reps (I think it was Bloomingdales) however, I did ask (don't know why) about removing my name.  What they said was that the only way to get my name off was for her to close the account.  Like a lobster trap, you can in, but can't get out. That doesn't seem to agree with the other posts, but I thought I'd throw it out.

On a side note, because I just finished looking into this: I have been practicing AZEO, but I read in here that the "O" should be a bank card, not a store card.  Then I read that if you are an AU, that there is an "AU" ding of a few points if one of them doesn't have a small balance.  So I guess it's AZE2 for us that try to find every point of score we can.

[dragontears]

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@CH-7-Mission-Accomplished wrote:

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@pkenn wrote:

Really? Wow i never heard of the "terminated" bit, i thought they always disapeared. 

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I have a bunch of old AU accounts with my spouse, my best friend and my parents.   Some are 30 years old.   They work.    

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FYI this is not always the case. Frequently AU accounts are removed once someone is removed. 

[CH-7-Mission-Accomplished]

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@dragontears wrote:

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@CH-7-Mission-Accomplished wrote:

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@pkenn wrote:

Really? Wow i never heard of the "terminated" bit, i thought they always disapeared. 

---

I have a bunch of old AU accounts with my spouse, my best friend and my parents.   Some are 30 years old.   They work.    

---

FYI this is not always the case. Frequently AU accounts are removed once someone is removed. 

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I have more than a dozen terminated AU accounts.   Never has one been deleted.   Could it happen?  Sure.  But you can always be added back as an AU, so you are really risking nothing.  If they delete your AU account, you can just get added back.  The one caveat is with AMEX.  AMEX, when adding an AU, uses the date the AU was added as the opening date -- not the actual account opening date -- so there is that.  You have much bigger issues with that big balance reporting.   Just get yourself terminated and check out your reports when it updates.  If you don't like the result get yourseld re-added.

[Anonymous]

I agree that 9 times out of 10 a high utilization AU account will do more harm than good, as the hit from the utilization often outweighs the age of accounts gains.