Why is DH's credit score higher than mine?

[Anonymous]

We've been married 20 years. Other than our individual 401Ks, everything we have is joint. We both entered the marriage with decent-but-not-fabulous credit ratings, mainly because we were both in our mid twenties without a lot of credit history. No bad history for either of us, just not a long record.

We have:
A joint mortgage - 18 years, refinanced once. First and only home purchase for both of us.
One joint HELOC about 10 years ago for a remodel, paid off and closed 7 years ago
One joint credit card, limit $20K, we charge most expenses to it and pay it off every month
Joint savings, checking, investment accounts, etc
Mostly joint bills, although some are in his name or mine, nothing significant or vastly different
No car loans. Had one in both our names about 5 years ago, paid it off in 3 years.
No other debt for either of us
Our individual incomes are within 2% of each other. This year mine is slightly higher, but it's bounced back and forth over the years.
No individual assets other than the aforementioned 401Ks, which are pretty similar.

And yet, his credit score is 80 points higher than mine.

When I look at mine for suspicious activity, there is nothing. The only "dings" on my report are:
- Not much credit history (apparently one long-term mortgage and one credit card isn't much)
- High credit usage (i.e. I don't have a bunch of unused credit lines sitting out there; we charge $10-15K of the $20K limit every month, but pay it off every month)
- Not enough credit accounts
- I get "excellent" marks for paying everything on time, and having stable debt (same mortgage & credit card for many years),.

My credit report literally lists all three of these dings as "areas for improvement". It says I should open a new credit line (but not use it!) if I want to improve my score. Aside from the idiocy of how completely ridiculous that is... Those factors should all be identical for DH ... And yet, his credit report says nothing about them. His score is 830, mine is 750. Which is still perfectly good, but the difference annoys me.

What am I missing??

[Anonymous]

My wife and I both have excellent credit. Hers is insanely high- in the 840s, nearly perfect. Mine is in the 820s. My salary is twice her salary.

[Anonymous]

Why do you care other than ego?

If you pay off your cards every month you are considered a deadbeat by the industry because they won’t make money off you. Maybe he has a card with a balance you don’t know about.

But again, unless you are borrowing money soon, who cares? It doesn’t matter.

[Anonymous]

My husband and I both have great credit and have a similar story as OP. But my score has always been just a bit higher than DH. We assume it is because I had a credit card 4 years before him. That is really the only difference.

[Anonymous]

Not sure why this bothers you to the point of such a long and detailed post, OP.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:We've been married 20 years. Other than our individual 401Ks, everything we have is joint. We both entered the marriage with decent-but-not-fabulous credit ratings, mainly because we were both in our mid twenties without a lot of credit history. No bad history for either of us, just not a long record.

We have:
A joint mortgage - 18 years, refinanced once. First and only home purchase for both of us.
One joint HELOC about 10 years ago for a remodel, paid off and closed 7 years ago
One joint credit card, limit $20K, we charge most expenses to it and pay it off every month
Joint savings, checking, investment accounts, etc
Mostly joint bills, although some are in his name or mine, nothing significant or vastly different
No car loans. Had one in both our names about 5 years ago, paid it off in 3 years.
No other debt for either of us
Our individual incomes are within 2% of each other. This year mine is slightly higher, but it's bounced back and forth over the years.
No individual assets other than the aforementioned 401Ks, which are pretty similar.

If the bank that issues your credit card is ever hacked, or your card is lost/stolen and you don’t have access for a few days, it’s not a bad idea to have a second credit card you could access in an emergency.
And yet, his credit score is 80 points higher than mine.

When I look at mine for suspicious activity, there is nothing. The only "dings" on my report are:
- Not much credit history (apparently one long-term mortgage and one credit card isn't much)
- High credit usage (i.e. I don't have a bunch of unused credit lines sitting out there; we charge $10-15K of the $20K limit every month, but pay it off every month)
- Not enough credit accounts
- I get "excellent" marks for paying everything on time, and having stable debt (same mortgage & credit card for many years),.

My credit report literally lists all three of these dings as "areas for improvement". It says I should open a new credit line (but not use it!) if I want to improve my score. Aside from the idiocy of how completely ridiculous that is... Those factors should all be identical for DH ... And yet, his credit report says nothing about them. His score is 830, mine is 750. Which is still perfectly good, but the difference annoys me.

What am I missing??

[Anonymous]

If the bank that issues your credit card is ever hacked, or your card is lost/stolen and you don’t have access for a few days, it’s not a bad idea to have a second credit card you could access in an emergency. I keep my first credit card, issued 15 years ago when I was in grad school, locked in my safe. I have Netflix automatically charged each month and my bank auto-pays the card, so the card is actively used but doesn’t take any effort from me. If my purse was stolen, I could use that card for a few days until a replacement card is issued.

[Anonymous]

Why does it matter? This doesn’t seem worth thinking about to me.

[Anonymous]

I don't know how the algorithm works between spouses. Is it possible you are primary somehow or your card has more on it than his (assuming joint card account with 2 cards)?

Regardless, that is extremely high credit usage (75%!) so I would fix that by getting another card to up the denominator or paying it down before the billing date. Mine reports the amount on the bill to the credit bureau so $15k charged but $10k paid down mid cycle would be $5k/ only 25% usage on billing date.

[Anonymous]

In our house, DW had grad school loans that were paid off and has always had a higher credit score. Otherwise, everything has been joint for 20+ years.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:My wife and I both have excellent credit. Hers is insanely high- in the 840s, nearly perfect. Mine is in the 820s. My salary is twice her salary.

Salary <> credit score

Hopefully she’s smarter than you.

[Anonymous]

I’m a little older than my spouse and I still have some old credit cards that I never use but I’ve never closed. I believe the algorithm rewards the longevity of the accounts and unused available credit.

So my credit score is higher.

[Anonymous]

I really think it's the high ratio of charges to total credit available even if you're paying it off monthly.

We recently switched from regularly using one credit card with a high limit to using another with a lower limit because we wanted to accumulate more frequent flier miles on the card. We always pay the balance off every month, as you do, but because the limit on that card is lower the ratio went up. We never gave it any thought until I got a notice from a credit monitoring service that it detected a change in our spending habits that could affect our credit scores -- and that was it. I was pretty surprised. I mean, why does it matter if we have, say, $100,000 in credit card limits each month, and use less than 10 percent of the limit, but almost all of that is only put on one card with a $20,000 limit? Insane.

[Anonymous]

I would open another card. As others have said, it's not a bad idea to have a spare in case your card gets lost or involved in some online fraud (it's taken me up to several days to get a new card in this case). 10k out of 20k is high even if you pay it off every month. If you get a new card it'd be more like 10k out of 30k and yes that looks better to the CC companies. If you really don't want to get a second card then you can pay the balance before the statement- in that case it would show 0k of 20k on your report and would also improve your score.

[Anonymous]

I would immediately ask for a higher limit on that credit card if you are consistently charging that much and paying it off.