Question about Authorized Users and increasing credit score?

[Anonymous]

Okay so I have an issue. My husband's credit score dropped due to a missed payment (He thought his student loans were out of deferment in May but they were out in February).

His credit was recovering from the Great Recession (when his work was downsized before we got married) And we were thinking of getting a house. It dropped drastically.

He has 30% credit utilization, his credit averages to about 2 years old, his ontime payments are now below 95%.

My credit is much better then his. It averages to 5 years old, I have a variety of different credit, and my payments are at 100%. However my credit utilization is high. We are paying it off extra each month but it's about 80% right now. My credit score is good to average.

So my question is: would it be better to add him as an AU to my credit to get his credit age and on time payments up or is it better if he just gets a secured credit card?

I had heard that secured cards can improve credit as well but he didn't want to add another credit check since we were hoping to buy a house this year.

Any help would be much appreciated.

[Anonymous]

I don't think you adding him as an AU would be very beneficial. 

There are a couple of things he can do to raise his score, in order of importance:

1 - Contact the lender with which he received the late payment and ask for forgiveness.  This is known as a goodwill adjustment request.  He can try by phone first, if that doesn't work start sending letters/emails.  If they removed the late payment and that's what caused his score to drop X Points, he'll immediately get back those X points. 

2 - Lower his utilization.  While 30% isn't terrible, getting it below 28.9% will result in a score gain and getting it below 8.9% will result in an even greater score gain.

3 - You mentioned "95%" of on-time payments.  That sounds like a number provided by Credit Karma "fluff" software or something similar.  Understand when it comes to on-time payments, there's 100% (like yourself) and then "everything else."  Anything below 100% or less than perfect generally means a dirty file instead of a clean one.  Whether that's 99% on-time payments, 95% or 70% really isn't too relevant to scoring.  Less than perfect = bad.  Also, if you are using CK to see this number, it is only factoring in the last 2 years of payment history, where FICO scoring looks at 7 years.  I he had additional late payments 2-7 years ago, those are adversely impacting his score as well but the fluff software isn't showing you that.  If he has other negative items, reverting back to my Point 1 is likely his best bet to attempt to get them cleaned up.

That's what I'd recommend for him.  For you, while off topic to the conversation, I'd strongly recommend getting your "high" utilization in check as soon as you possibly can.  If you were able to get it down to at least below 28.9%, it may be worth considering adding him as an AU.