OK so as I contemplate which card/cards I want to app for next month, I wanted to weigh the possible ramifications of new TL's on my average age of accounts.
I found a website, which is a nice tool for calculating it.
http://aaoacalculator.tumblr.com/
You could also set this up pretty easily on Excel, but I'm lazy :-). Anyway, my current AAofA is 7.2 years. Per the calculator, if I were to app for all the cards I'm thinking about (3-4 cards), my AAofA drops to 5.1 years.
My question is: Is there a big difference in the eyes of lenders between 7 years and 5 years? In terms of the scoring algorithm, can I expect a significant drop in score by dropping two years of my AAofA?
I've seen many people on here with pretty limited AAofA (<2 years) with 760 FICO scores, so they do not seem to be hurt by their short histories. Is there an "optimal" AAofA? I would be curious to hear from those who have gone on 'app sprees' if they saw significant drop in their scores and/or apprehension from lenders...
@user5387 wrote:AAoA is part of a FICO category that has 15% overall weight.
Payment history and utilization both have weights about twice this.
Individual lenders may use other scoring models or other criteria, and lots of new accounts may shut you out with them, independent of your FICO score.
As far as scoring, is there an optimal AAofA?