I got married about a year ago and my wife (who is 20 now) had no credit history at the time. We didn't really think about it until we started seriously looking for housing and tried to get a mortgage a few months ago. So far, I've made her a joint account holder on a 2 year old card of mine with a flawless payment history and an authorizied user on another card with a 7 year history and 2 late payments from the year 2000. She got a Blair catalog in the mail offering her a pre-approved credit line and she applied (and was accepted) for that as well. So, currently all three of her reports are showing the 1 month old Blair account, as well as the 7 year old credit card (Interestingly enough, the 2 lates are only showing up on experian). Right now, only Experian is showing the 2 year old credit card, but I'm hoping that will change soon. Currently, her scores are 694, 682, and 648. (This is from TrueCredit, so I don't know if they're FACO or not). Unfortunatly, she tried to apply for a number of credit cards before realizing that lack of credit history would prevent them from accepting her, so she has 4, 2, and 5 inquiries right now (and all within the past 60 days) She's showing about 78% utilization on the credit cards right now, and that will go way down soon, since I recently paid these accounts down. Hopefully that will raise the score further. I'm wondering if we should do anything to try to raise her scores even more before we apply for a mortgage. We could apply for store credit and/or a gas card. I've been told that the different account types can be a positive factor, but I don't know if the decreased history and increased inquries would outweigh the positives. Thanks, Brett
You will end up hurting her score if you are looking at getting a mortgage within the next 6 months.. She is going to go around applying for credit.. so there are inq's to factor in.. then having a new account or even worse alot of new accounts will lower her score.. She is fine right now for a mortgage loan.. Credit mix is important.. So add her as a AU to 2 of your cards.. and maybe a store card like sears.. Installments loans are also a part of it.. But at this point.. you trying to add more credit to her file, will likely drop the score down for about 6 months.. SO be careful
Re: Re: Helping my wife establish credit That's basically what I was thinking. Like I said before, as soon as the new credit card balances hit her score should go up, since utilization will be way down. At this point I guess I'm thinking we'll leave well enough alone. She's already an AU on my two accounts with good records. Anything else I add her to will either have a short history (like 1 year) or have a number missed payments (or both). I do have a Sears account, but that's showing a few missed payments including a 60 day late, so I'm thinking that would do more harm than good. Even with the late payments on my credit reports my scores are between 600 and 620 right now, so hopefully between the two of us we should qualify for a reasonably decent rate. Thanks, Brett
Re: Re: Helping my wife establish credit If you havent already, try disputing the lates on the oldest accounts.. If they fall off, that would boost your score.. along with giving you another card you can add her too as a AU.. But I do agree.. dont add her to cards with lates on it.. At least one of you should have as clean of a report as possible..
Re: Re: Helping my wife establish credit Another way to boost scores that I haven't heard mentioned yet is getting rid of all those inquiries. I recently got rid of 4 inquiries a couple of weeks ago, and it boosted my score by 40 points. Go for bumpage on Equifax (creditwatch gold, and privacy guard), and Transuinion (WK), and experian (can't do it).
