@CreditDunce wrote:As long as you don't cross an integer boundary, it doesn't seem like the AAoA decrease will hurt your score much. However, if your AAoA is reduced by 3 months, it will be an extra 3 months before you get the 2 year AAoA boost to your credit score. There will be a penalty for the HP/INQ and for the new trade line. A rule of thumb is it takes 6 months for your credit score to recover, but it is YMMV.
FICO doesn't care about your credit limits. It only cares about your utilization percentage. CLI's will not directly help your credit score. However, they can make it easier to maintain a low utilization. Higher limits tend to smooth out fluctuations in your credit score. VS 3.0 and the insurance risk models do give bonus points for higher credit limits.
On the flipside, unless you never intend to apply for anything ever again after this credit card, just go get it now if you can qualify.
The only constant in the algorithm is that time passes, and as such it's best to take any negative (inquiry, reduction in AAOA, etc) as soon as possible as that'll get you healthy the soonest.
What someone posted previously as building a buffer does indeed hold: the more tradelines you have, the less reduction the addition of a new tradeline actually makes. In my case I'm down to the point where a new tradeline would move my AAOA by about half a month... aka, no big deal, but I'm sitting at 23 tradelines currently which is by no means necessary.
