Hello all, About a year ago, my wife began listing me as an authorized user on many of her credit cards. We did this to help me establish some positive credit during my rebuilding process. Well, now my credit reports are clean, and my credit scores are still in the mid 600's due to the outstanding debt and credit limit/debt ratio on many of the cards. We are in the process of paying these accounts off to prepare to buy a house, but my scores would go up dramatically if I could reduce the debt showing on my credit report. I am thinking about removing myself as an authorized user on these accounts, and then disputing the accounts as such to get them removed from my reports. My question is, will this help my score, or hurt it? It should help because the debt load goes down dramatically (as seen on the reports), but I am worried it may hurt the score because it takes away positve tradelines and history. I do have other positive accounts (credit cards, auto loans, paid off installments, etc...so I am not without positive credit without my wife's accounts. Should I do this??
To be honest I don't think anyone really knows for sure. Credit Scoring is really a hit/miss situation. I would say that it would probably hurt your scores if your accounts aren't over 2 years old. If they are I don't see a reason that it would hurt you. Basically if your debt to income and utilization on credit lines you do have is low then your score will probably rise as the accounts get older.
ok, I agree credit scoring is such an inexact science. I think that paying the accounts off and leaving some of them open would help, since this would be good for my balance/credit limit ratio..
I am in the process of doing the same thing that you are doing. Except that right now I am already in the disputing stage. I was on as an auth user for someone in the past that screwed up with their payments. I disputed it, and my score went up 74 points. So I think it does matter.
I think removing myself from thes accounts would be a good thing. The only thing that makes it a little confusing is that the accounts that I am an authorized user for are all good accounts. No negatives. The bad thing is the amount of debt they represent that is going against my score.
