Average Gardening Time - Current Trends

[joesbrat67]

I've been gardening now for the last 24 months, which seems to be my typical pattern.  I'm wondering if others tend to garden for the same length of time, or if shorter/longer than 24 months.

I'm considering coming out of the garden, but wanted to solicit feedback from others, based on their experiences.

FYI - AAoA = 4.5 years, Age of oldest = 14.5 years

All 3 scores are in the 800's range 

[Anonymous]

I wouldn't think twice about coming out of the garden if I were you and there was a card I wanted

For myself, I really haven't apped or acquired much since getting my rebuild underway. Not tanking my AAOA and keeping my inquiries down does stay on my mind, but I haven't really wanted anything that I couldn't apply for due to these concerns. 

My youngest CC is 1 year old and more recently than that, I only have two inquiries from nearly buying a new car last Fall. I honestly think I just wanted to see what I could get approved for, and I got 3-4% approvals on a $25k car, so I was happy with that. I came to my senses and fixed up my paid off car instead.

[Anonymous]

A common choice is 13 months.  That enables all inquiries to fall of FICO's radar (they appear on one's reports but are not scored by FICO).  It also causes one's Age of Youngest Account to become > 12 months, which gives many people a significant score boost. 

It's also virtually certain, based on how FICO describes its algorithm, that FICO tags certain accounts as new.  (I.e. an account is considered "new" or it is not.)  A reasonable guess by many people is that FICO uses 12 months as the cutoff.  (I.e. an account opened < 12 months ago is "new.")  Note that this is just a reasonable guess: the non-FICO models used by the insurance industry use 24 months as the definition for "new."  According to what FICO has published, its models look partly at "how many" new accounts a person has.  Another reasonable guess is that it does that as a ratio, e.g. Total Number of New Accounts / Total number of Accounts.  (The insurance models use the ratio # of New Accounts / # of Open Accounts, and thus the percentage can exceed 100%.)

Anyway, all that is by way of saying that gardening for 12 months has a side benefit there too -- it probably causes FICO to consider that 0% of your accounts are new.

In your specific case, your scores are so extremely high that you could forget about gardening altogether -- unless a home purchases might be on the horizon.  Forgetting about gardening has some nice advantages, in that it enables you to grab a new card every 3-9 months, choosing them based on which cards have the best promotions going on.

The gardening-spree approach makes bonus chasing much harder.

[pinkandgrey]

Dang 2 years of gardening. That’s great. I think a lot of us have good intentions but don’t last more than 6 months....

[joesbrat67]

I'm usually very analytical when comes to deciding which credit card to get, specifically ones that benefit my spending habits/trends.  That being said, I have 2-3 cards in mind for possible app'ing.  My last two 24-month HPs fell off about a week ago, and other than an HP for auto financing back in December 2018, there's nothing else on my file and no major house financing in the near future.

[calyx]

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@pinkandgrey wrote:
Dang 2 years of gardening. That’s great. I think a lot of us have good intentions but don’t last more than 6 months....

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Right?   I think I made it three months last time.  

Right now I'm aiming for 6.  I will reevaluate at that time.

[800FICOGoal]

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@joesbrat67 wrote:

I've been gardening now for the last 24 months, which seems to be my typical pattern.  I'm wondering if others tend to garden for the same length of time, or if shorter/longer than 24 months.

I'm considering coming out of the garden, but wanted to solicit feedback from others, based on their experiences.

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I'm nearly 50% into a 24 month gardening period in order to erase inquiries, age accounts and hit some thresholds. Once that period is up, I will tend to garden for 13 months with a few 6 month garden sessions mixed in. 

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@pinkandgrey wrote:
Dang 2 years of gardening. That’s great. I think a lot of us have good intentions but don’t last more than 6 months....

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I find gardening quite easy. For me, the temptation to app has long passed.

[Anonymous]

Gardening periods are all what works for the individual based on where they're at in their [credit] life and what their goals are.

For bonus-chasers, gardening isn't expected much at all for example.

For someone just starting out in the credit world or relatively new to it anyway, gardening can't really be expected.

For someone like me that's got a well established profile and is happy with all of my credit products, I can/will garden almost indefinitely.  I'm at about 2 years now and have no intention of applying for another credit product for about another 4 years when I'll be looking for another mortgage.  So, I'll be at ~6 years of gardening at that time.  After that, who knows... but gardening when you're in my place is quite easy. 

[Anonymous]

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@pinkandgrey wrote:
Dang 2 years of gardening. That’s great. I think a lot of us have good intentions but don’t last more than 6 months....

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I've never been a very good gardener, whether it be plant or CC based. lol So 24 months isn't a reality for me, my longest stretch was just over 12 months. Spent too long in rebuild phase, and just started aquiring prime credit products a few years back. By 2020 I hope to have all those older subprime cards closed. Trying to spread them out, as I've heard closing too many accounts close together looks bad.

In addition to those, I have a couple recent CCs I want to close due to non use/wrong product. And replace them with something else.

[Gmood1]

I garden only by chance there's nothing I'm trying to acquire. If that's the case. I may go 3 or 4 months.
That's about as long as I've gardened in the last 4 years. 😂
Do what works for you.
My approval rating is still well over 95%.