Originally Posted by
takeshi74
Depends on the condition of the tradeline and how it reports its open date. If the tradeline has high utilization, negative history, etc then it can hurt. If the tradeline reports as opened when the person was added as an AU then it will drop AAoA. If you're automatically adding each other as AU's on new cards then you're definitely dropping each other's AAoA's. That said, AAoA is a relatively minor factor.
http://www.myfico.com/crediteducatio...yourscore.aspx
If you're looking to build credit you can't rely on being an AU and need to build your own tradelines.
Oh that makes sense about the AAoA. I know about AAoA but I failed to consider it when adding authorized users. At first my wife added me as an AU to build credit but now I can rely on my own tradelines as I have several cards in my own name. Recently I've just been adding AU so we can both put spend on the cards but I guess it would behoove me to be a bit more selective of which cards are actually worth adding an AU.
Any other factors that could be negatively affected by adding too many AU's? One thought I had was all the AU's accounts showing up as new accounts on the credit report and would that lead to an issuer being more likely to decline an app because of too many recently opened accounts even though they are AU accounts?