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Average Credit history

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Anonymous
Not applicable

Average Credit history

Hello people of the community 

my question to you is ...

 

lets say i have my first credit card for 9 years or so.

i opened another one 2013

AND THEN i opened 4 at the end of 2014...

 

This caused my lenght of history to go down causing my credit to drop. 

 

question is if i close one or two of the ones i opened in 2014 with a year of history... Would it increased my lenght or would it be the same?

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2 REPLIES 2
takeshi74
Senior Contributor

Re: Average Credit history

There's a reference thread for that linked in the Helpful Threads sticky in the Credit Cards subforum:

http://ficoforums.myfico.com/t5/Credit-Cards/Closing-Credit-Cards/m-p/347190?jump=true

 

tl;dr - Closing accounts does not increase AAoA and close accounts continue to age and factor into AAoA as long as they are on your reports -- typically 10 years after closure.

 

Having more accounts of greater age can hlep to mitigate the impact of new accounts on your AAoA but keep in mind that AAoA is typically only 15% (Length of Credit History):

http://www.myfico.com/crediteducation/whatsinyourscore.aspx

 

Message 2 of 3
Anonymous
Not applicable

Re: Average Credit history

Hello Takeshi74.  Very helpful reply to the OP!

 

Slight caveat: you mention that AAoA counts as typically 15% of a person's FICO score.  A bit more accurate would be to say that there are a number of factors related to one's length of credit history (age of oldest account, average age of accounts, etc.).  Together these age related factors typically make up 15% of one's score.  But AAoA is only one of the factors.  (I wouldn't be surprised if it was the single most important though.)

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