Open a new CC?

[cwwatts1202]

I plan to apply for a USDA direct loan in probably november or december of this year. I have some baddies to get removed from my CR before I apply. The only things I have reporting right now are a secured CC I opened October 2011 and an auto loan opened January of this year. I also have an account with Badcock furniture store, I pay $40 a month on my furniture, but I dont think that's reporting, it's not on my Equifax report from here through score watch anyway. So I'm curious if I should open another CC, or if the 1 CC and auto loan are enough? I'm just worried about applying for another CC and my score going down cause of it. I was approved for a Cap 1 secured card but had to pay the sec. deposit by January and didn't so I was thinking of re applying for that. I know lenders like to see a year of good payment history on a few things on your CR, just not sure if the 1 CC and auto loan is enough?

[pizzadude]

It's hard to know what a new card would do to your FICO score, usually it is advisable to have two or three open CC accounts.   However once the new account reports it will lower your AAoA, which won't be good.    What is your AAoA right now ?

[cwwatts1202]

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@pizzadude wrote:

It's hard to know what a new card would do to your FICO score, usually it is advisable to have two or three open CC accounts.   However once the new account reports it will lower your AAoA, which won't be good.    What is your AAoA right now ?

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5 yrs 10 mos..already not good

[cwwatts1202]

Sorry, it's 2 years, 5 yrs 10 mos is my oldest acct, AAoA is 2 years.

[pizzadude]

It may not be a good idea to open a CC now, but you should try to ballpark what the new account will do to your AAoA, if it is going to drop it significantly then you may just want to focus on cleaning up your reports right now.

[cwwatts1202]

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@pizzadude wrote:

It may not be a good idea to open a CC now, but you should try to ballpark what the new account will do to your AAoA, if it is going to drop it significantly then you may just want to focus on cleaning up your reports right now.

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How do I figure that out? (im new to this lol)

[MarineVietVet]

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@cwwatts1202 wrote:

 

How do I figure that out? (im new to this lol)

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Your AAoA is the sum of the ages of every account (except CA collections and public records) on your report, whether open or closed, calculated in months, divided by the number of accounts and then divided by 12. I use the division by 12 to make it easier to convert into years. This is measured from the time each account was opened until present. All you have to do to see what this might do to your AAoA is divide the total number of months by one more account than you presently have.

You can never have an AAoA of less than one year. This is built into the system.

You’ll need to figure the age of each account, open or closed, on each report. If all three reports are identical (very unlikely), you're in luck; otherwise, you'll need to run this for each report.