Length of Credit History VS. Average Acc Age

[Anonymous]

Which weights more in FICO scoring?

I have several accts (mostly student loans) that are 6-9 years old, but were opened for less than 2 years, two of them for just 3 months. No late payments. Keep or delete? And would deleting be fairly easy to do? Thanks. 

[cobaltnv]

I am not sure exactly what you are asking. It sounds like these are accounts that are 6-9 years old, but have been paid off or consolidated. Assuming this is the case I will continue. Closed accounts continue to age, therefore, it would likely not be in your best interest to have these removed. FICO does not really care about how long an account was open for only how old it is.

Cheers 

[Anonymous]

Thank you, that basically answers my question, except for one thing: you're saying AAoA doesn't matter and my accounts that were open for 3 months don't hurt my score? I thought that also was a scoring factor.

[cobaltnv]

AAoA matters a great deal. Accounts age even when closed--it does not matter how long an account was open for only how old it is. To calculate your AAoA you add up the number of months SINCE each account was opened (not the number of months the account WAS open). Then divide by the total number of accounts and divide by 12 to convert to years. 

[Anonymous]

Thank you

[haulingthescoreup]

Longest history (oldest account reporting, whether open or closed) AND AAoA are both important. Whether equally important or not, I don't know, but I've gotten a positive for history (longest history in my case) and a negative for short history (AAoA for that one.)

I'm not positive about this, but the FICO formula seems particularly peevish when there's a big discrepancy between longest history and AAoA. This can happen if you are an AU on an old, old card (--> establishes your longest history), but your AAoA is only 4 years old, due to some big-time credit building in recent years.

It's a similar question to "Which is more important --individual card util or overall revolving util?" Answer: they both are, and we don't know if they are equally important, or if one has an edge over the other.