Suze Orman does not soften the message. “I wouldn’t do it in a million years. It will be the biggest mistake you have ever made. I don’t care how you love that kid. I don’t care how great that kid is. If a bank will not lend your child money, neither should you. Because if they screw up, it’s going to ruin your FICO score forever. And guess what? You’re on the hook to pay those bills.” That was Orman on a recent episode of her Women & Money podcast, drawing a bright line between helping a child build credit and signing your name next to theirs on a loan.
The stakes for parents are concrete. A co-signer’s credit report carries the loan as if it were their own. A missed payment lands on the co-signer’s file. A default lands in the co-signer’s mailbox. Orman’s argument treats a bank’s refusal to lend to your child on their own as information about the risk you would be taking on personally.
How Noreen Got Her Son a Car Without Signing for It
The verdict lands harder because a listener wrote in with the alternative playing out in real life. Noreen had followed Orman’s earlier suggestion and added her son as an authorized user on her credit card. She holds a FICO score of 833. Her son ended up with a score of 810.
Then came the payoff. “My son just bought his first car with an 810 credit score, totally accredited to my 833 score, and was able to get an apartment on his own without having me co-sign for either,” Noreen wrote. She spelled out why the car mattered most: “The significance of the car is that I did not have to co-sign on the auto purchase. Removes me from any liability, which is fantastic. Yay, yay, yay!”
That relief is the whole point. Noreen’s son got the loan and the lease in his own name. Noreen’s name is on neither. If anything goes wrong with the car payment, the lender’s phone call goes to him, not to her.
Orman on the Authorized User Route
Orman used Noreen’s note to revisit how she frames the tactic. “If you just put your kid on your credit card as an authorized user and don’t tell them you did it right, then your FICO score will become their FICO score. I didn’t even know that that still works, but obviously it does.”
She also widened the frame beyond the parent-child setup. “If you have somebody in your life that has a high FICO score and they’ll put you on as an authorized user, you cannot hurt their credit. It does not matter. They do not give you a credit card, so their score becomes yours.”
The direction of the effect cuts both ways in her telling, which is why she added a warning about picking the wrong person. “If you ask somebody and they have a bad credit score, that bad credit score becomes your score. So make sure that it’s good and that you see it in writing.” Orman’s rule: verify the score before you agree, and get it on paper.
For context on the scoring scale she referenced, Orman noted that “The one that most creditors still look at to this day is the one from Fair Isaac Corporation. And that score goes to a high of 850. If you’re below 500, trust me, you are absolutely already FICO’d.”
Why the Co-Sign Answer Is Still No
Orman’s refusal to co-sign centers on the two-part exposure the parent takes on. Half the damage sits on the credit file. The other half sits on the checkbook. In her words, a slip “is going to ruin your FICO score forever” and “you’re on the hook to pay those bills.”
Noreen’s story tracks that logic in reverse. She helped her son qualify for credit without attaching her signature or her liability to either the auto loan or the lease. Her outcome is the outcome Orman says parents should be aiming for.
What Parents Can Take From the Segment
Orman draws the line at liability. Helping a child build a credit file is one thing in her view. Guaranteeing a child’s debt to a lender is another. Parents weighing a request to co-sign can use her framing directly: if the lender has already decided the borrower does not qualify on their own, the co-signer is the one absorbing the risk the bank turned down.
Orman’s closing instruction to Noreen and everyone else listening was simple. Build the credit file if you want. Sign the loan documents for someone else, in her words, “not in a million years.”
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