forgot to mention 13.2 years history as the old school loan is from 2002 with 4.5 years average age. for you young folks out there, I'm 46.. I should have 25 years of history. but killing my credit young and then owning my own business and paying cash for everything killed the long history. keep your credit clean so you don't have to restart at my age 
Super congrats! That is fantastic! 
My history is pretty old since Amex back dated. Also paid for everything & found out how bad that hurt.
@Anonymous wrote:
I started my "credit repair" two months ago. I had one bad mark which was a six year old collection and I did things a tad backwards, but read on as for anyone wanting to get that mark off your record, there is hope. a few months ago a played with the sims, wondering if I did this or did that how my score would go. the good news is the sims are pretty accurate, or, at least in my case they have been. so here is how my build went and how the scores went. yours can, and most likely will vary. I started two months ago in the 615 to 635 range. I had two 800 dollar installment loans paid on time and in full back in 2006 and 2008.
I also have a woodforest reli secured revolving account with 18 months on time payments. at the time I was 87% utilized with only the 1000 showing as my pool. I went and got a cap1 qs 300.00, a shell card 500.00, a mobile card 800.00, a Kay's card 4000.00 and a secured wf card 500.00. I did not know at the time inquiries would hurt me. I also had the bad medical debt 733.00 from six years. the medical was settled and three weeks later and three calls it was taken off my report. my scores saw about 25 to 40 points from this and the new credit pool added around 35 points as well.
I paid the 870 credit line down to 79.00 and saw around 19 points. it is hard to know exact points for what as the cards were reporting as active around the same time. I DO know the inquiries took 3 to 5 points. sometimes they took points, other times they did not. I recently applied for and was approved a business line of credit through woodforest 2500.00 but it has not reported as of yet.
one last thing... student debt... I was in rehab on the last of my school debt and it reported this past cycle. 5371.00 and the original debt was 4371.00. oddly it did not hurt my scores at all.... I will be putting 1000.00 at in when it comes active (deferred until august) then hitting it again to 1800.00 owed and then making monthly payments for 18 months just to show recent installment debt.
I am currently at 696\744\686 according to myfico and those scores are within a few points of the latest score pulls from the three cra. I figure an increase in scores as the cards report 1% on one card and the others paid in full, along with increases as I hit the student debt AND the business credit line comes onboard. these are my findings as I have been playing with credit over the past two months and paying down, losing a bad mark and building pool. for ANYONE new, it does work and points will be added. last note, when does it report... it took about 45 days to see everything to date resolve... longest 45 days of my life.... but in those 45 days the scores grew almost 100 points and there are TONS of good reads here on myfico to become credit savvy....
Grats to your success 
