Account Ages

[nicemann]

Ok I know I should know this by now, but I still can't seem to find that special number.  When it comes to account ages, what is the magic number to be at to get a decent score for that 15% of the category?  Five years, ten years?  I understand the older the better, but was wondering if there was any kind of scale like there is for account utilization.

Thanks!

[haulingthescoreup]

The problem is that many of the score buckets are driven by age. So you can have a higher score with a shorter history, and a lower score with a longer history.

What is your current AA0A (average age of accounts) and longest history? Because to make it even more special, both of them can drive your scores.

[nicemann]

Oh my average age sucks.  I opened eight new trade lines in the last year.  My oldest active TL is two years old.  I do have a TL from 2002 and one from 2004 but those were closed by me years ago.  I got a long ways to go, I know that.  Was just wondering if there was a special number that I needed to hit.

At least I can say, I am done Apping.  I am just going to garden for awhile now.  Only things I will do is try for CLs and maybe a car in a year or two.  Still waiting for my mortgage to show.  Closed on it back in June.

Message Edited by nicemann on 09-01-2008 09:01 PM

[haulingthescoreup]

Your longest history is over two, so that's good, and it will help when your AA0A hits two as well. In the meantime, it will help a lot when you no longer have any new accounts (accounts under one year in age.)

[pokerpro]

Hauling -

"Your longest history is over two, so that's good, and it will help when your AA0A hits two as well."

Please elaborate, I am trying to better understand that part of FICO, my longest is 5 years or so, average age history according to EQ FICO is 3 years.

But at the same time, I am adding myself as an authorized user to my wife's Macy's store card, which was opened back in 97, so I am sure that will throw the whole relative calculations off. Granted, I still have a bankruptcy on file, so i know that I wont be moved into any other scoring buckets any time soon

[cobra19]

There are other buckets other than those associated with age.

[pokerpro]

cobra, i know that buckets dont matter much to me since i still have bankruptcy on my file

i am more concerned with Average age versus oldest account and degree of impact

[haulingthescoreup]

---

@pokerpro wrote:
Hauling -

"Your longest history is over two, so that's good, and it will help when your AA0A hits two as well."

Please elaborate, I am trying to better understand that part of FICO, my longest is 5 years or so, average age history according to EQ FICO is 3 years.
But at the same time, I am adding myself as an authorized user to my wife's Macy's store card, which was opened back in 97, so I am sure that will throw the whole relative calculations off. Granted, I still have a bankruptcy on file, so i know that I wont be moved into any other scoring buckets any time soon

---

Within your BK bucket, you still have the opportunity to do better (or worse) than others with BK's. So you are still being evaluated on util, length of history, and all that.

It's pretty common for BK's to have low age, because of so many accounts being nuked. But for however long the thing displays, you will still be increasing your history and managing other parts of your credit score.

I would think that the Macy's card will help you, but I have to confess that I'm not familiar enough with the ins and outs of BK to try to predict. One thing that you could do while waiting is go to the FICO score estimator (not simulator) and load in your current info, note the estimated score range, and then go back and plug in the older history to see if it changes anything.

Hope I read your question right; I might well be answering something you didn't even ask.

http://www.myfico.com/FICOCreditScoreEstimator/

For those familiar with the estimator on bankrate.com, this is the same one.

[smallfry]

Average age and oldest account in the BK bucket are fairly substantial. TU and EX report correctly for me in that all the accounts that are supposed to be on my reports actually still appear.

The hatchet job EQ has done by removing 3 accounts opened between 1996-1997 due to fall off between 2010 and 2012 and dropping a paid for mortgage 6 months early has cost me the difference of over 30 points between my TU and EQ and 20 points between EX and EQ. EQ 696 EX 717 and TU 726.

[pokerpro]

Hauling - Thanks for your insight

Interestingly enough, I just pulled my EQ again, last pull was 8/1 score was 687

Score now is 694, up 7 points

AMEX is counted as a new account ( i am an authorized user)

Utilization is down from 14% to 5%

as a result i am up 7 points,

no notation on Macy;s yet. And I really thought I would have lost points with AMEX and the average account age going down

Message Edited by pokerpro on 09-02-2008 02:09 PM