@longtimelurker wrote:
@Anonymous wrote:
I actually just called today and closed my credit one mastercard with a $500 SL. It has only been open for 11Months and I just paid it off so it was actually hurting my AAoA. Suprising they were super nice on the phone and even though I cancelled the card, they credited my Visa account with every AF I have ever paid (even though it is fully paid off). With this account closed I should go up about 3 months to a 3 Year AAoA. I however have my original credit one visa that's been open for 4 Years and has a SL of $1,250. I have made the decision to keep this open as my credit is still fairly new and this card is helping my AAoA. For you however, I would take everyone elses advice and close the accounts with AF's...
For FICO, AAoA doesn't work that way. It counts open and closed accounts (that are on your report). So closing a card typically has no impact on your AAoA, until it drops off, which can be about 10 years later. Credit Karma and other systems that use Vantage use only open accounts, so there the AAoA will increase.
@longtimelurker, VantageScore actually does count closed accounts toward aging stats. It's Credit Karma's front end software that doesn't. To be fair, CK calls it the average age of *open* accounts. But that's still misleading and useless as the age of open accounts isn't a factor in the two big scoring systems.
