Sept 2006 - Last time I applied for a credit card!

[Want2BDebtFreeNow]

3 years of "sobriety". The cool part about it is that I don't have any desire to apply for one.  Every once in a while I get the itch, but with the current credit market I know it would be a waste of an INQ.  Plus I do want to get to the 2 year mark with NO inq period on my credit report.  All the ones on there now are from trading veh's, another bad habit that I am trying to break.  In July of 2010 I will have had my car for 2 years! yay! 

Anybody else care to share their "sobriety" story? :-)

[pattycake]

Wow - that is what I call SELF-RESTRAINT!!!!

[Anonymous]

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@Want2BDebtFreeNow wrote:

3 years of "sobriety". The cool part about it is that I don't have any desire to apply for one.  Every once in a while I get the itch, but with the current credit market I know it would be a waste of an INQ.  Plus I do want to get to the 2 year mark with NO inq period on my credit report.  All the ones on there now are from trading veh's, another bad habit that I am trying to break.  In July of 2010 I will have had my car for 2 years! yay! 

Anybody else care to share their "sobriety" story? :-)

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I have not applied for Credit since Feb 2001. That was not even a credit card, but was actually an application to join a Country Club and they wanted to do a credit check.

We are very happy with our CC's (we have just 4) and I have turned down all CLI's offers as we have no need for it.

[Want2BDebtFreeNow]

That is my goal, 7 more years down the road be able to say the last time I got a cc was 10 years ago! by then the only thing that will be on my credit report should be the open credit card accounts as all the other accounts should have dropped off by then (all paid on time) but I have tons and tons of c cc's reporting on my credit report from the days I didnt know any better. I thought the more the better.

[creditwherecreditisdue]

That's a worthy goal. I have 11 TL's reporting on EQ and EX and 10 on TU. All but one are open, and that one was closed by me years ago to avoid an RJ. It feels good to be a master of your own destiny (more or less). 

[pattycake]

I'm more into a good FICO score.  But, that may mean laying off and following your lead, OP!!!

[DI]

No more apping for me!!  I just checked  Credit Karma and my AAoA has gone from 4 years to 2yrs 9mths.    But, strangely my credit score with CK increased.

I'm not sure how AAoA works.  Can someone confirm that my AAoA will go back up to 4 years after 1 year 3 mths?

Message Edited by DI on 10-08-2009 05:42 AM

[haulingthescoreup]

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DI wrote:

No more apping for me!!  I just checked  Credit Karma and my AAoA has gone from 4 years to 2yrs 9mths.    But, strangely my credit score with CK increased.

I'm not sure how AAoA works.  Can someone confirm that my AAoA will go back up to 4 years after 1 year 3 mths?

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As long as you don't have any new accounts appear on your reports, and as long as any old ones don't drop off, your AAoA should go up by one month every month.


Sort of a general aside: don't forget that if and when your next oldest account falls off, you'll still have the same length of history (from the older account remaining), but you might well lose some AAoA. The fewer accounts you have, the more impact on the average age when an older one falls off, or when an entire account is removed. I think lots of people forget that part.

[DI]

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@haulingthescoreup wrote:

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@DI wrote:

No more apping for me!!  I just checked  Credit Karma and my AAoA has gone from 4 years to 2yrs 9mths.    But, strangely my credit score with CK increased.

I'm not sure how AAoA works.  Can someone confirm that my AAoA will go back up to 4 years after 1 year 3 mths?

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As long as you don't have any new accounts appear on your reports, and as long as any old ones don't drop off, your AAoA should go up by one month every month.


Sort of a general aside: don't forget that if and when your next oldest account falls off, you'll still have the same length of history (from the older account remaining), but you might well lose some AAoA. The fewer accounts you have, the more impact on the average age when an older one falls off, or when an entire account is removed. I think lots of people forget that part.

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Ok.  I 'm still waiting for the PenFed and GM card to appear.  So I guess my AAoA will decrease 2 months for two cards opened the same month, or is it just 1 month?

[creditwherecreditisdue]

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@DI wrote:

Ok.  I 'm still waiting for the PenFed and GM card to appear.  So I guess my AAoA will decrease 2 months for two cards opened the same month, or is it just 1 month?

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It's not that simple. It is most likely going to be more than a two month decrease. The two new, yet to show up TL's will be adding two more zeroes to the top part of your fraction and adding 2 two the bottom part. If you know how many open and closed TL's were included in that 2y 9m it can be figured out. (That would be the total number of all open and closed TL's of all types reporting on your CBR.) Hopefully it stays above 2y for you!

(According to my back of the envelope calculation the AAoA of accounts would only go down by 2 m if it is currently based on 31 reporting TL's!)