How much score will increase after you add authorized user or seasoned tradelines depends completely on your credit report.  Like a finger print or DNA, no credit report is the same. As such, the score improvement you should expect depends entirely on your current credit report. The “40 to 50 points per tradeline” claims you see on competitor websites are so false and misleading, it could be considered humorous (if only these claims didn’t negatively affect real people’s lives).

Can you tell me, generally, how much my score will increase by adding seasoned tradelines?

Generally, the fewer the amount of tradelines (or accounts) you have on your credit report, the larger impact the authorized user tradelines will have on your credit score. And, likewise for the inverse. Largely, the less negative items you have on your credit report, the higher your score will increase after adding seasoned tradelines. Again, the opposite applies. We will discuss three scenarios… One; what score increase to expect with negative items such as collections and charge-offs, two; what happens if you try to pack your credit report with too many tradelines, and, three; what happens when you add tradelines to a limited file.

Tradelines added to a report with derogatory items…

Of course, all situations are different, but it is possible to boost your score with tradelines even if you have derogatory or negative items on your current credit report.  The amount and severity of the negative items will determine how much of a boost you get… along with the appropriate selection of tradelines to counter the problems with your report.  Below is an example of a credit report with derogatory items and the addition of tradelines.  The scores went from between 590 and 630 to over 700 on all bureaus.

Can I just load up my report with tradelines and get an 800 credit score?

We’ve ran into a couple of situations where clients demand that we sell them 5 and 6 tradelines because they are (insert reason here). Unfortunately, we decline each request as it simply will not work and we like to help our clients, not hurt them. We are not entirely sure why this happens, but if you exceed a certain amount of authorized user tradelines, it seems to freeze any movement in your score. Take the scores from the report below. Theoretically, with that many lines, this client should have been in the 700s, but the client barely got out of the 600s. By the way, this client came to us for additional lines… no that wasn’t a joke. Secondly, no underwriter worth their salt would allow such a significant amount authorized user tradelines through closing.

How much can my score increase with nothing but seasoned tradelines?

If you are in the rare position of having no credit, you can expect drastic increases in your credit score.  The example below is from a foreign immigrant whose credit file was about 3 years old at the time they purchased tradelines.  They literally had no credit whatsoever.  To avoid the catch 22 of inability to obtain credit because a lack of credit, they purchased tradelines from Superior Tradelines, LLC and their score went from zero to the 770s.

A lot of clients contacting Tradeline Broker or Superior Tradelines, LLC ask about primary tradelines, installment tradelines vs. authorized user or seasoned tradelines.  We share a fairly consistent answer… there is no point in adding an installment line and seasoned primary lines do not exist.  Those two statements needs discussed in more detail, but in this article, we are only going to focus on revolving vs. installment debt.  Or, in this case, choosing which type of debt is best to add to your credit report in terms of boosting your credit score.

Defining revolving vs. installment debt is a must.

According to Investopdeia, installment debt is “Debt issued with the condition of regularly occurring intervals for payment by the debtor, until the principal and interest are paid in full.”  Whereas, revolving debt is, according to Lending Tree is “Revolving debt typically has a variable interest rate, an open-ended term and payments that are based on a percentage of the balance.”  In a nut shell, installments are card notes, mortgages, personal lines of credit, prime equity lines, etc.   And, revolving are credit cards, some store credit cards, etc.

Trustworthy opinions regarding installment vs revolving debt, and which one has a large impact on your credit score.

According to a Senior Contributor of the Fico Forums at myfico.com, “Installement loans do have balance-to-original loan amount ratios which affect your score.  However, it does not affect it nearly as much as CC utilization percentages.”  Just for the record, “CC” means credit card, if you were wondering.  Credit Cards specifically means revolving accounts.

Another Senior Contributor wrote “You will save money paying off the higher interest installment loans but it won’t do anything for your score. Depending upon where you end up on your revolving utilization number of accounts with balances … scores would improve by paying down credit card debt.”

FICO likes to keep their algorithm secret, but they release enough information to read between the lines.

Under the FICO® Risk Score Reason Codes, there are 38 entries for revolving accounts and only 11 regarding installment.  The installment entries mainly discuss a “lack of” installment accounts, which only contributes to the 10% of portion of the score of “types of credit used”.  On the other hand, the 38 revolving codes consider a wide range of aspects including available credit, credit owed, age of accounts, payment history, etc.  In short, revolving tradelines affect almost every aspect of your overall credit score… especially that 35% chuck call “payment history”.

If you are going to purchase tradelines to boost your score, make sure they are revolving credit lines.

As evidenced above, it simply makes no sense to add installment lines of credit to your credit report in order to boost your credit score.  Revolving account, such as the authorized user tradelines or seasoned tradelines we sell, can be added to your credit report within 15 to 45 days and can drastically increase your credit score.