@Anonymous wrote:I have two questions:
1. What are the catagories for the buckets? I understand that two of them are "consumers with a new credit history" and "consumers with a two- to five-year credit history," but does anyone have a definitive list with all of the catagories?
2. How is the average age of accounts calculated? Do they average the amount of time that the account was open? Do they calculate the average using the time the account was opened to present, regardless of whether it is still open or not? Do they omit some types of accounts from the calculation, or do they use all accounts?
Thanks in advance.
Welcome to the forums.
I'm not sure sure about the bucket categories. There have been interesting discussions on the subject. If you do a search you can read all of the different opinions on this and I'm sure others will chime in soon enough.
Your AAoA is the sum of the ages of every account on your report, whether open or closed, calculated in months, divided by the number of accounts and then divided by 12. This is measured from the time each account was opened until present.
You’ll need to figure the age of each account, open or closed, on each report. If all three reports are identical, you're in luck; otherwise, you'll need to run this for each report.
Here’s an example from a post back in March:
1 Mortgage- 6/06-2 years 10 months = 34 months
2 Mortgage- 5/07- 1 year 11 months=23 months
3 CC- 11/97-11 years 5 months 137 months
4 CC- 10/07- 1 year 6 months =18 months
5 CC- 10/07- 1 year 6 months = 18 months
6 CC- 7/08 –0 year 9 months = 9 months
7 CC- 11/96 – 12 years 5 months = 149 months
8 CC- 12/08 – 0 year 4 months = 4 months
9 Auto Loan- 7/08 – 0 year 9 months = 9 months
10 Installment Loan –1/09 - 0 year 3 months = 3 months
11 Crown Jewelers $0 Bal, $2,500 CL, 10/08- TU, EXP – 0 year 6 months = 6 months
12 CLOSED Discover 8/99- TU – 9 years 8 months = 116 months
TU-525/12 accts= 43 months/3.58 years
EXP-409/11 accts-37 months/3.08 years
EQ-403/10 accts-40 months/3.33 years
Let's look at the TU report. The total numbers of months for every account came to 525 months. This was divided by the number of accounts (12) to get 43 months. This figure was then divided by 12 (months in a year) to get the AAoA of 3.58 years.
For Experian it would be 409/11/12= 3.08
For Equifax 403/10/12 = 3.35
You’ll notice each CRA has a slightly different AAoA because the information on each report was different.
This is the first time I've tried to figure this out on paper and I hope I'm right. I nervously await being gently corrected by those who actually know what they're talking about. 
I edited this on 12/24 after being gently corrected by LIGHTNIN. She pointed out that I was using the wrong figures to divide. I appreciate her helping me on this.