Is this helping or hurting me?

[ty24]

I have been trying to clean up my credit for quite sometime now. I recently settled two COs w/ Cap1 and am working on my final two w/ WFNNB and Chase which total about $6k. In addtion I have two open CC accounts totaling about $3600 (both of which are close to their limit, but I am staying up to date on the payments) and student loans in the amount of $53k. I have been laid off for about 8 months and believe my credit has a fair amount to do with this, especially the delinquent accounts.

Yesterday I decided to pull my Experian report and much to my surprise there was a new account on my report w/ $10k debt. I was shocked. I do recall that a few months back I had to fly out for a job interview and needed a CC for expenses. My parents have been kind enough to help me out with this and I'm pretty sure that this is the card that I used. I know I had issues w/ getting the card to work while getting fuel and had to call my mother to get her to clear it up w/ the CC company. I don't know for sure that she added me as an authorized user, or if you can even do that on the phone, but I'm waiting for her to get back to me on it. This increased my credit by 10k, however the credit line is $25k and the card has been open since 1988, when I was tiny, and has been up to date forever. Is this hurting me or helping me? Is there any kind of simulation that I can run to see how this effected my credit? Should I have had to sign something in order to be an authorized user and should I fight this?

Thanks in advance for your help!!

[Denita]

This should help you if it is $10k that has a long history and low utilization. Your score is probably reduced because you have high utilization on your other cards. That is about 30-35% of your score is the utilization.