Joint Accounts Questions

[Anonymous]

I am 25 and have a EQ FICO of 687. I'm not looking to make any big purchases any time soon, but still want to ger my score up in the short term. I recently took on a new job and am putting my entire raise towards my CC debt left from college. My UTIL has gone from about 33% to 23% in 5 months and should be at 9% by the end of May. I know that will help my FICO dramatically. My mother has great credit and will help me out, but I need to know if I'm wasting my time with the new FICO 2008 and AU rules. I know that getting her to add me as an AU is now pretty much useless, or at the most, only temporarily fruitful. I want a longer term answer. So what about adding me as a joint account holder? Is it possible to convert a long held card into a joint account? And will I reap the benefits of long history, on time payments, higher limits, etc. that AU's used to get? What are her liabilities? What are my liabilities? Is there any other information I should know about trying to do this? Or should I do it on my own because I am wasting my time? Any help will be greatly appreciated.

[haulingthescoreup]

Hi, Moobs, I don't know that it's a waste to go AU for now. FICO 08 appears to be on indefinite hold. I'm AU on my husband's card for the age, and I've decided not to convert to joint for the time being. Once FICO 08 kicks in, if it really hurts my scores, I'll decide then.

There are some real landmines out there for joint status, especially if it's not for a married or other couple who live together and do their money management together. Even when they do, we get too many posts where DH or DW ran up the card, hid it from the partner, maybe ran off into the sunset with a new love interest.

For either joint or AU status, if one person is trying to time payments and control balance reported for scoring purposes, it can get pretty exasperating to get the other person to understand and play the game.

With joint status, if anything negative at all happens to that card, the other person is equally responsible, and the CCC will definitely come after the "innocent" party to recover its money. This includes a trusted friend getting access to the account, pulling out cash, and on and on. An AU can just bail out in this situation (except for a spouse in community property states, where they'll come after you anyway.)

That's a start anyway. You're putting your mother's credit at risk, and you would also put your own at risk if something strange happened on her end. hth