joint account holder question.

[Anonymous]

Hey guys, I have question Re:joint accounts my mom help me with my score, a couple of weeks ago she added me on as a joint card holder for bloomindales charge card that has been open since "98" we just recently found out that the card still existed, so we woke the card up from it's deep coma & resirected it. Prior to the boost I had a score to the upper 690's with a 7 yr history, now my average history is @ 9yrs the bloomies help me on average 15-19 points, Also once I used it They gave me a $2500 CLI, Which has yet to post on my CR, the limit before was only $500. Now If she were to add me on to a PC RICHARD'S CHARGE CARD that is only 1 year older than the bloomingdales cc Does that mean that my total history would only go up by 1yr making it 10? Thanks in advance!

[RobertEG]

Good questions, pepper!  You are fortunate that it is your Mom!  Trust is all in a joint account!

Being added as a jjoint account holder gives you jjoint ownership of the TL, but ALSO joint responsibility! 

Lets presume, for a moment, to avoid saying anything to offend Mom (LOL!) that the joint account was held rather with Tony Soprano down at the Bing-a-Boom, or whatever his garbage company was called.   I dont think the instant advantage would make you sleep as sound at night.

You become tied into the joint's credit.

I know, many will say, each person has his or her own credit report, and marriage, etc., does not meld your credit reports into a joint report.  That is true.  But take a moment and listen to the last webinar posted in the Credit Education tab above on this site.  The point was made by no other than FairIsaac that, even though reports, and thus credit scores, are not merged, nonetheless potential lendors may pull the CR of others who are listed as joint accountants of yours when evaluatiing your risk, because you are legally obligated on those accounts.

There aint no free.  Moms are probably pretty safe joint accountants. Spouses are in only about 50% of marriages.  Hmmmmm.....

[Anonymous]

Thanks for the reply, and no I didnt know that my report can get pulled if my mom applied for credit, which see rarly does anyway. but about my question with the history would my history go up just one more yeay or does it get calculated differently?

[Anonymous]

It's an average age of all your credit cards. So add up the ages of all cards and divide by total number of cards.

[haulingthescoreup]

It's actually the age of all your accounts --mortgages, loans, CC's; open and closed.

Figure out how long each account has been (or was) open in months, and then add them all up. Divide this figure by the number of accounts, and then THAT figure by 12. This will give you your average age in years and months.