AZEO and authorized user data point?

[Moneyklutz]

So...

My TU score tanked 10 points today and after dissecting the three alerts I received from myFICO I'm suspecting this was the cause?

One was an All Bankcard account(s) credit limit increased, another was The total balance on all your Bankcards has decreased by $29 and the last was (sadfacePandawithtears) Your FICO score has decreased from 702 to 692 (TU only)

I have 3 CC's in my name and the last -$29 statement payment zeroed them all out, I'm also an authorized user on 3 of my wife's cards of which two still show balances. I think i did dun a booboo in doing this since the ten point drop is in line with what I lost a couple three months ago when I purposefully zeroed out my accounts 'just to see what happened'.

So do you think I'm safe in assuming that being an AU on other cards does not count in the AZEO calculation?   

(Cursory search didn't turn up this assumption...apologies if it's been discussed before)     

[Anonymous]

Commenting to subscribe. I'm not an AU but interested.

Also...having balances on more than 1/3 or 1/2 of your cards will ding you. Not sure how AU factors there.

[Moneyklutz]

Wifes card balances are all way below 8.9%...(thanks to all on this board and the wisdom they've taught me/us)

[Anonymous]

Sorry didn't mean 1/2 balances. Meant 1/3 cards.

Different bureaus have different limits but typically you want to report balances on fewer than 1/3 of your revolving cards.

So if you have 4 cards, report balances on 1 not 2. 7 cards means you can report balances on 2 cards but not 3.

So 3 cards of yours + 3 AU cards = 6. Means only revolve balances on 1 of the 6 reported cards.

2/6 = 1/3 which may be too many accounts with balances (on Equifax).

[Moneyklutz]

Huh...*scratches head* 

It'll be interesting to see what happens to my EX and EQ scores when the $29 payment (and subsequent all personal CC's show AT zero) is reported to them as well. 

curiouser and curiouser...

[Anonymous]

Yeah.  The full fine print of AZEO would be to say this:

The one card that shows a positive balance should be:

(a) A true credit card (not a charge card)

(b) A card in your name (not an AU card)

(c) A card with a balance of at least $5 (ultratiny balances, like $2-3, are occasionally treated as $0)

(d) A card with a credit limit of 34.9k or less (monster huge CLs can cause the entire card to be removed from the utilization calculation for some FICO models)

[Moneyklutz]

Cool beans!   Thank you both for the clarifications.

...dang fine print gets me every time, I need to squint better