topic Average account age? in Rebuilding Your Credit

Average account age?

bhenken08 — Thu, 15 Nov 2012 06:47:13 GMT

I Talked with a lender today she recommended that I open another two secured cards I already have one along with a car loan and a personal loan. I also used credit karma today and my average account age is a 0.3.

What would you do?

How much does account age effect my score?

I'm at 595 now I want to get to 640 to get a house.

Re: Average account age?

Asailorshort — Thu, 15 Nov 2012 06:59:30 GMT

CK doesn't include closed accts for aaoa so it's possibly way off. How old are your current accts? Do you have any old/closed accts reporting? Also, with a 595' i'm assuming you have some baddies on your report. Getting rid of those will help your score much, much more than another couple secured cards. Adding a couple more secured cards *could* be helpful at some point, but right now you should focus on those baddies, imho.

Re: Average account age?

bhenken08 — Thu, 15 Nov 2012 07:05:39 GMT

Loan 7 months

car 4 months

car 6 months

I do have some other closed accounts reporting a couple of good and about 4 bad

not sure what you mean by baddies, I did have 4 collection accounts that have been paid. I'm working on goodwill but haven't had any luck yet

Re: Average account age?

Asailorshort — Thu, 15 Nov 2012 07:49:32 GMT

'Baddies' are anything negative, like your paid collections. Since they're already paid, gw'ing them is pretty much your only recourse. Do you have anything else? Unpaid collections, charge offs, lates?

it does look like you likely do have a very short aaoa. Actually, imo, it seems that its so short that i dont think it would hurt for it to get a little shorter by adding a couple more secured cards. It might help a little to wait until your car is 6 months old, but perhaps not any noticeable amount. When you do apply for the secured cards check out the cc board to see what your best deal would be and app for them both on the same day.

Re: Average account age?

madmann26 — Thu, 15 Nov 2012 11:20:50 GMT

http://ficoforums.myfico.com/t5/Credit-Cards/AAoA-Calculation/td-p/501000

Post #2.

In contrast, my AAoA is 5yr 3mo (EQ), 5yr 6mo (EX) and 5yr 10mo (TU).