I have 5 Authorized User cards from wifey that are over four years old with Open/Never Late. We also rarely use them now. She has her own cards and I have my own individual cards with less than 2 years of Open/Never Late. My question is whether having those 5 inactive Authorized User accounts hurts my credit scores. Should I just have wifey send letters to the banks asking them to remove my name as Authorized user and report it to the credit bureaus that account be closed at customer's request. Would this help increase the credit score? Thanks.
It will hurt more than help. Too much credit is a negative, but older credit history more than offsets this. Also, I don't think too much credit is a problem unless your available credit is well into six digits.
