Length of credit history counts 15% (127 FICO points), and type credit mix counts 10% (85 FICO points). Two years of credit history is well below average, so it will take a few years to begin to move up higher in this category, and capture more of those 127 points.
Those with short credit history and few accounts are hit with a FICO dilemma. To improve your credit mix category, a healthy mix of revolving, bank, and installment loans (personal,auto, mortgage) is necessary. This requires establishing new credit, which will, with each new account, add in an account with zero credit history into your avg age of account calculation. Each new account that you app for will also cost you a new inquiry, which remamins at aroung a 5 pt or so hit for a year. So it is very difficult for one with relatively short credit history and a thin credit file to approach anything near 800.
For one of your credit age and limited number of accounts, scores within the 700's now are extremely good! Dont fret. My scores are almost identical to yours now, yet I have an oldest account of almost 20 years, and an avg age of accounts of 8+ years. Until a couple of years ago, I paid no attention to credit scoring, and thus am paying in other categories that you clearly reconginze, at your young age, how to avoid the devastating affect of any late payments in the most important category of payment history. YOu got it together! Just get older!
I would suggest, from what you have stated, that you might consider a plan that will probably, in the short term, lower your current FICO score, but will build for the future. Since your account age is now low, this might be the time to get those new accounts needed to improve credit mix, and as time goes by, having more accounts with established and aging credit history will lessen the impact of any future new credit that you might secure in the future. It will also add more CL to your current %util calculation. Dont fixate only on age of accounts.
Message Edited by RobertEG on 10-08-2008 07:06 PM
