My dad gave me a credit card when I was 18 and going to college for emergency usage. I used it a few times to book last minute hotels, at the doctor's office, ect. Maybe spent $1k-2k over 7 years of having it in my wallet.
Turns out the card is connected to his but has my name on it: I am an authorized user on his credit card. I go to check my credit the other day and my score is low: 640. He has a 28k to pay off on his credit card and it is negatively impacting my credit score. I have a personal credit card that I have never missed a payment on and fully pay down to zero monthly. Regardless of my personal credit hypothetically being good, my credit score is 640. I am having my housing applications denied for rentals because of the low score and I want to buy a house in the next 5-8 years and want a better mortgage rate than what is available to me as I am connected to my dad's 28k debt (which I do believe he could pay off within a few years based on his income).
Is there any way out of this? Will staying as an authorized user eventually help my credit score since he intends on paying the card off? Or if I get off the card now, will my credit score go up and reflect only my personal credit? Or will my credit score continue to reflect that this card was maxed out at one point?
Being an authorized user messed up my credit. Help!
byu/SomaticSpacePrincess inCreditCards
Posted by SomaticSpacePrincess
5 Comments
Remove yourself and it’ll be gone from your credit.
If you already have a card in your own name, an authorized user account is doing zero to materially help your credit aside from just artificially inflating your score. There’s virtually no benefit to AU accounts in the first place. They don’t build your credit at all.
With that said, just call the bank and ask to be removed. It’ll be a 2 minute call, and it will completely disappear (well, in a billing cycle or two) and be as if it was never there at all.
Get yourself removed from the card ASAP. When you’re removed from an AU card it disappears from your credit reports as though it were never there. It in fact never helped your credit in a meaningful way to begin with, because lenders ignore AU cards in underwriting decisions. Please read through the credit myths megathread on r/Credit, you seem tangled up in several.
You can call the issuing bank and ask them to remove you, or have your dad remove you.
Do you still need the card for anything? If you’re not getting any benefit and it’s harming your credit profile, you don’t need to stay on it.
Call the issuer to remove as AU. Removal from credit report isn’t necessarily automatic. OP may need to then dispute the account with the respective agencies so they can follow up with the issuer. Hopefully the issuer isn’t Amex bc this doesn’t work with them.