Adding spouses as AU

[Anonymous]

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@nwa479 wrote:

@Anonymous  My AAoA is EQ (3yrs, 0 Mths), TU (3 yrs, 1 Mth), EX (3 yrs, 3 Mths).  The age difference is due to some installments reporting on TU/EX but not on EQ.  

I have 19 total revolving accounts, 15 open and 4 closed.   Of the open 15, 12 are bank cards and 3 are store cards.  I planned to close a few of the accounts I'm not using but will wait on that until after I see the results of adding an AU account. 

My wife has about 5 or 6 cards I could add that are over 8 years of age.  She has them all paid off except one.   The one with a balance I did not want because her utilization was about 12% on it.  Once she pays this down, I may add it.  Its a Cap1 with 8k CL.  The CL really doesn't help me bc I have 1% utilization.  

The first card we'd add is a Barclay card she's had for 15 years with only a $500 CL.  I had her put $10 on it and when the statement closes, I'll have her add me as an AU.  I wanted to see if there was any impact on my mortgage or other scores.  I could add more of her cards which would increase my AAoA to about 4 years total if I added all of them.

My next question is what is the difference between a dirty/clean scorecard?  I have a paid collection that hit my CR last June for all 3 CRAs.  Otherwise, the EQ would be clean.  EX/TU have an old repo with $2500 balance on it about 4 yrs ago.  

I plan to post this test as a separate post once I've got the results.  I didn't see much of a bump at all on Mortgage or other scores when I hit AZEO.  I'm sure the collection is dragging these down.  I believe I would be on the D2 scorecard for F8.  

Thanks for your input on this. 

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@nwa479 well I see I missed part of your post. You're going to add a 15 year old card first? Would that then be your oldest Revolver? If so then that could cause unrelated score change. Would be better to add a younger card first with a small balance. 

like I said the benefit of AZEO is partially from reducing the number of AWB, which does not offer as many points in a dirty card, so that may be why you weren't seeing as many points for that. 

[Anonymous]

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@Anonymous wrote:

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@simplynoir wrote:

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@coldfusion wrote:

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@Anonymous wrote:

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@coldfusion wrote:

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@Anonymous wrote:

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@coldfusion wrote:

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@Anonymous wrote:

If she adds me as an AU and has a zero balance it won't help my score?

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One thing to keep in mind is if a primary motivation for being added as an AU is to boost your score that issuers tend to strip out AU accounts as part of the evaulation process.  

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So this is where I am confused.  So the credit bureaus themselves will strip this out?

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No, it will be reported as an account with you listed as an authorized user.  When your report is pulled the (potential) creditor will see the account and that you are an AU.    

The creditor will decide if and how that account will count toward assessing your creditworthiness. 

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Ok thanks.  My question was just about the score.  

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The CRA provides the data, not the score.  Credit decisions are made upon your credit report, not the score that gets spit out based upon whatever algorithm the creditor chooses to apply to the data provided. 

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@Anonymous, I think this needs to be understood what @coldfusion is saying here. In simple terms yes it will help your "scores" but the banks who pull your reports for credit/loan purposes don't have ANY obligation to use that score when deciding to extend credit. In a way you can say they simply pull the information from the reports like accounts, balances, any negatives, etc and from there derive their own scores which may be different than what EX/TU/EQ is saying

To a lot of banks when they pull reports and see that AU account they can say "computer, ignore that AU card/account when calculating our own internal scores because it's based on their OWN credit and that is not really theirs" in a nutshell. Years ago AU accounts were a way to inflate one's scores to get more favorable limits and APRs but they've closed that loophole for the most part. That's what he's trying to say here

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But my question still has to do with just the score.  Maybe I am wrong here.   Let's say my credit profile and my finances are acceptable to a bank to approve a mortgage but my credit score is 675 and they tell me that they won't even look at anything else unless I am a 680.  Because that's the situation right now that I am dealing with.

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@Anonymous The score effects of adding an authorized user card to the mortgage Scores will be beneficial if it maintains a zero balance as it another account with a balance.

How many accounts do you have open? How many open and including closed? Additionally any authorized user account that you add would preferably have as much age as possible and at least as much age as your average age, so that it can potentially increase your aging metrics and possibly get points there as well as gaining points from adding zeros. And it must absolutely have a perfect payment history. 

@Anonymous depending on which mortgage score you are trying to maximize and how many accounts you have, it could be very beneficial to add one or more with zero balances. 

[nwa479]

@Anonymous I'll see what cards she has that are younger than my oldest revolver which is a bit over 5 years.  Yes, this would be my oldest revolver if I add it.  Its amazing the number of differences I see in scores depending on the type of score, Mortgage, F8, F9.  My EQ shows the following scores.  Its frustrating that the mortgage is the lowest.   Have also one inquiry on EQ and 6 new accounts in the past two years which could be driving that one down.  

F8 - 722

Mortgage 660

Auto 5,4,2 - 671

Auto 8 - 736

Auto 9 - 827 - paid collection so it doesn't show

BC 8 - 736

BC 5,4,2 - 683

F9 - 805 - Fico 9 does not count paid collection. 

[Anonymous]

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@nwa479 wrote:

@Anonymous I'll see what cards she has that are younger than my oldest revolver which is a bit over 5 years.  Yes, this would be my oldest revolver if I add it.  Its amazing the number of differences I see in scores depending on the type of score, Mortgage, F8, F9.  My EQ shows the following scores.  Its frustrating that the mortgage is the lowest.   Have also one inquiry on EQ and 6 new accounts in the past two years which could be driving that one down.  

F8 - 722

Mortgage 660

Auto 5,4,2 - 671

Auto 8 - 736

Auto 9 - 827 - paid collection so it doesn't show

BC 8 - 736

BC 5,4,2 - 683

F9 - 805 - Fico 9 does not count paid collection. 

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@nwa479 The collection and the New accounts will bring it down. Yes definitely try to get one younger than your oldest revolver so that doesn't throw off the test. That would be awesome! And you can always add the others later!