Which will help credit score the most?

[celebrity0608]

My fiance (very soon to be wife) has a weak credit score. In a year or so we will have enough saved up for about a 15-20% down payment on a house and get out of our tiny apartment.

We'll...my question is which of these will help her score the most?

I have a credit acount around $5k and have used about half of it. It will be paid off completely in less than a year from now, and is at 0%. So would it help her more to make it a joint account now, so that it has time to age for a year and she has a lot of on time payment marks? Or should I just pay it off and then add her?

Thanks in advance!

[noppenbd]

I don't think it will matter. I would guess that once you add her as a joint account holder the whole account history will appear on her report. So in a year if the card is paid off it won't matter if she has been a joint account holder for 1 month or 1 year. If it's all the same to you, why not add her now?

[Cylenchar]

The advantage of adding her now is that it sometimes takes several months for a card to report to the credit agency, so that way once you go to have her credit pulled it will be more likely to show up.

[jIM_Ohio]

The best things you can do to improve joint credit scores:

1) keep your score high
2) use your name as primary on the mortgage
3) open a new account NOW in fiance's name.
4) use the new account for small purchases and pay this balance in full every month
5) any new credit accounts (other than mortgage) open in your fiance's name. New CD player needed- have fiance open an account at that department store and then pay that balance in full.

What I documented might hurt score short term (because of high activity) and also it could put majority of fiance's accounts in a "less than 1 year" or "less than 7 year" account history status.

But making regular payments to credit is a great way to dramatically improve the credit score.

I have a credit score of around 720-780, depending on day of month and the bureau used. My wife's scores when we met were around 580 or 620.

Here is what we did:
1) we bought condo and only put it in my name
2) we closed her old accounts both before and after condo purchase
3) we refinanced condo and added her to deed/title/mortgage
4) we opened one department store account in her name and we pay it off the same day we make a purchase (use the card, then write a check at cashier to pay off the card balance)
5) We bought a house with wife on original loan- her score had moved up to around 650 or so.
6) We opened a credit card account in my wife's name and I use this card for gas and groceries. It is paid in full each month (and also pays 1% of purchases towards mortgage balance).

I don't know her current score, but it is 8 years later (since we met) and 6 years later (since we were married).

[noppenbd]

Also note that being an authorized user on someone else's (even a spouse's) credit card will no longer help or hurt your credit score once the FICO 08 scoring kicks in later this summer. This is being done to prevent "piggybacking". Piggybacking is where you get paid to make a stranger an authorized user without giving them a physical card, improving their score. So if your wife is currently an authorized user on some of your cards her score may actually drop further when this new model kicks in. In that case you would want to make her a joint account holder now rather than later.

[celebrity0608]

Thanks for the great advice. I think that I'll just add her on it now. Also, thanks for pointing out that being an authorized user will not affect her score for much longer. She is an authorized user on 1 of my cards, so I will need to see about making her a joint account holder to it.

Thanks again for all the help.