8 years AAoA is a short credit history?

[lithium78]

My oldest account is 15 years is my AAoA is 8 years and yet my score is negatively affected by short credit history?  What AAoA are you supposed to have in order to avoid this problem?

[Anonymous]

I'm interested to hear the answer to this one too because our oldest reporting TL is 15 years old.  I know that every time a new TL is added it subtracts from the oldest account and brings DOWN the AAof A but, I don't know what calculations are used to wind up with the bottom line number of the AAof A. 

[GregB]

FICO lists a certain number of reasons that negatively affect your score. If there aren't very many reasons, some of the ones listed can be VERY minor.

Were there several other reasons listed above that one?

[IOBA]

As I understand it, and I could be wrong, FICO has "buckets".   For example, AAofA 1-5 yrs is bucket #1.   So they rate you against others in that bucket.  If you are new to credit, you would be a lower FICO score.    If you the one with the 5 yr history, FICO likes you better.   Now when your AAofA increases to 6 years, you move to the next bucket and are now a newbie there.   They compare you to the others in the same bucket (say 6-10 yrs).   So you may see a drop in your score.

It's happened to me - a score drop - when I make it from one group to the next.

The AAoA here are just examples.  I don't know what the real buckets are.

And it's true, every time you add a new account, it lowers your AAofA and lowers your FICO score.

[stan_the_man]

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@lithium78 wrote:

My oldest account is 15 years is my AAoA is 8 years and yet my score is negatively affected by short credit history?  What AAoA are you supposed to have in order to avoid this problem?

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Have you recently opened one or more new credit accounts in the last 3-6 months? I get the short history flag on occassion when I have recently opened a new account:

ME

TU98 - 786 Fico Score - New Account Opened 3 Months Earlier

You have not established a long revolving credit history.

Your first revolving account was opened 12 Years, 1 Month Ago

Of course, the fickelness of Fico finding a negative reason can be something like this:

TU98 - 791 Fico Score

You have too many credit accounts.

Number of your credit accounts currently paid as agreed 16 accounts

DW

TU98 - 724 Fico Score - New Account Opened 3 Months Earlier

You have a short credit history

Your oldest account was opened 11 Years, 3 Months Ago

Average age of your accounts 7 years

[AndySoCal]

Have opened any new accounts recently?