How long til a new account starts to show some positive action?

[Familywantsahouse]

Scores in siggie. Been working like a dog to get OLD (6 years mostly) bad debt removed. Showing 3 positive tradelines (well, technically 8 since the student loans now report as 5 seperate tradelines)

*Student Loans are OLD (mostly from 98-00), always paid on time.

Two new accounts

* Credit Card opened in Feb. Showed a small balance in March, and zero balance in April. (There is a almost 7 year old account being factored into utilization unfortunately, so utilization shows over 100%)

* Car loan (refinanced in Feb) always paid on time (original loan is a year old next month)

I know paying off the old charged off account will result in the most immediate score bump, but they don't want to "settle" and are asking over double the original CO amount. This is a last resort if the scores don't go over 640.

So my question is at what point does a "new account" start to help and not hurt generally?

[RobertEG]

Other than the first year or so when new accounts less than one year apparently are considered under new credit, they stop "hurting" when their age is close to your average age of accounts.  Obviously, any account younger than your AAoA has a negative effect on scoring.

While a bit of an over-generalization, FICO builds very slowly by presence of accounts in good-standing, primarily through  their slow contribution to AAoA.

However, it destroys very quickly when derogs pop up.  Avoiding negative items is the best score builder.  Its a risk analysis. 

Goodies mean you havent demonstrated bad risk, but not that it isn't there.  Baddies kinda demonstrate that risk is there.