@Anonymous wrote:
Quick Question: In your research, have you found that AU's are factored/weighted differently?
Yep. An AU card is sometimes treated just the same as a tradeline of your own, but sometimes it is not (even ignored completely) and whether it will be or not is a crap shoot.
The old mortgage models are much more likely to count every AU tradeline as no different from a tradeline of your own. FICO 8 and 9 are very unreliable and might or might not.
The best way to use AU accounts (from a purely credit scoring perspective) is as follows:
Do not add AU accounts if:
* You are chiefly trying to help your utilization. First off the AU card might not help. But also such a strategy means you are not able to control spending. The correct way to control utilization is to pay down your debt. You can spend a lot, have only one card with a $500 limit, and still have a 1% utilization.
Consider adding an AU card if all of the following are true:
* The AU card is much much older than your oldest account. (Example: your oldest account is 1 year old, the AU card is 15 years old).
* The AU card has no lates on it anywhere and you are confident that the owner will never be late.
* The owner will keep it under 8% utilization -- keeping it reporting $0 is best.
* The CC issuer has a policy of giving the AU account the same old "Date Opened" as the original cardholder.
In other words, an AU strategy is best used to artificially obtain a much older credit history (Age of Oldest Account). If the AU account isn't getting you that, or has significant balances or any derogs, it's useless or even harmful.
If you do find an AU card that meets all those conditions, you can try adding it. Make sure your utilization is already ultralow beforehand. If the AU card gives you a big FICO 8 boost, it means FICO 8 is treating it as a real account.
