Brought to you by Alisa Glutz of Color My Credit and The Glutz Group Cherry Creek Mortgage
John and Karen came to me wanting to buy a home but were concerned that their credit scores weren’t quite there. You could see the frustration of life had taken a tole on their marriage. I looked over their credit report and noticed Karen had an open Victoria’s Secret credit card she hadn’t used in over 2 years. I asked her if she still had the card and she replied…”oh wow that old thing. I don’t think so.”
So I told her to go down to the store and buy something small this weekend (literally haha) with the charge card by asking the store to look up your card number by your social security number. Then I told her to add John as an authorized user to the card. On Monday, she sent me the online printout showing the balance and we sent it in to be rapid rescored and three days later, Karen’s credit score increased 30 points all by updating the DATE of last activity on that account. (The dates are EVERYTHING on your credit report.) 30 days later, John’s credit report showed the authorized user charge card and because of the great payment history and the fact that she had opened it in 1997 (length of history is 15% of what makes up your FICO score), he got to “inherit” that account into his credit and his score came up 40 points!
John and Jane closed on their home with the best interest rate you can get and their marriage….better than ever thanks to Color My Credit! and maybe Victoria’s Secret too.)
