Important reminder here: No is a full sentence, so when someone asks you to be a co‑signer, just say no, that’s it, you’re welcome. 

Unless you want to be like the woman in the story below and start DMing absolute strangers about your wrecked credit score after deep Facebook undercover investigating to figure out if the person was there for Juanita’s 7th birthday and has her «Aunt» badge somewhere in her bio or if they just happen to share a last name. 

That’s because when people ask you to co-sign, they are basically asking you to let them borrow your adult life for a while. Your credit score, your phone number, your ability to buy a car or rent an apartment later on, it all gets dragged into their little experiment in «I’ll pay it later.» The unspoken rule is that they are supposed to treat your name like it matters. Some people treat it like a loophole instead.