Too Many Too Fast Destroyed Age

[Anonymous]

I started rebuilding my credit in December of 2018, the day before my 45th birthday. I had not used credit for almost 15 years before and I had many collections that were all medical. I had one bureau showing a FICO of 504 and the other 2 unable to calculate a score.

I went and applied for and received two secured cards, one Cap 1 and a Discover. My score started going up almost immediately and I then got a US Bank unsecured in April and then a mortgage in June. My score was 713 at this point.

I should have stopped there but I went haywire instead. I kept applying. I got some denials but mostly I was approved. I now have 16 or 17 new cards, the mortgage and a self lender loan. All this has messed up my average age and now I believe, it's holding my score back. I actually dropped to 686 as my highest with Experian and 655 with Equifax.

Yes, I drank the Kool-Aid and know I screwed up!

wjat can I do now? Am I just stuck for now and time is going to rule? Is there something I can do for improvement at this point?

Ues, I'm definitely done with applying for anything.

[AllZero]

Are those deragatories still on your reports?

[AllZero]

How's your utilization?

[AllZero]

Only one open installment loan (mortgage) is required. Your Self Lender might be redundant.

[Anonymous]

Up to a certain point, you took scoring hits for all those inquiries too. After a bunch of them they stop hitting your score but if I recall correctly, your first 9-10 likely cost you points each time. Add in penalties for new accounts and you definitely whacked yourself. Inquiry points come back 365 days after the inquiry is taken. New account hits come back over time, with various profiles seeing point recovery at 3/6/9/12 months.

No more apps for anything - that many accounts so quickly could spook some lenders into AA even, so let's hope that doesn't happen.

[Anonymous]

I keep utilization below 9% most of the time but occasionally go over. Never more than 29%

I figured self lender wasn't needed but I was saving for something anyway so figured I might as well get the bonus of having it work on my credit.

What is AA? Is that getting an account closed?

[AllZero]

As you surmised in your first post, time and no new accounts.

[Anonymous]

Age did not destroy your score. Utilization and/or negative items did. Age is small portion of your score. All my scores are over 720 and one of my reports has no item over 2 years and a bankruptcy. My other two reports which have a few older items, the scores are only slighty higher than the young report.
Get your overall utilization to 28% or lower. 

Cancel Self Lender. It is not helping you. Outside of utilization adding more credit items do not help your score once you get past the minimum 3 revolvers + 1 installment. Credit is a reverse scoring system. Think of it as starting with a high score and bad items subtract from your score not good items adding to it. If you had any lates with all this new credit its a double wammy. The only thing worse than a bad item is a young bad item. 

[Remedios]

I'm not rebuilding, but I've pounded AAoA into the bloody pulp twice now.

My scores temporarily stayed the same, then started increasing again. 

Damage from trashing AAoA is by far less harsh than any other credit transgression, and kinda easy to fix.

Stop applying for a while, that's all it really takes. 

[donkort]

As others stated:

As long as you keep your utilization down, and don't pay late, your score should rise.  Especially if you don't apply for further credit.  The inquiries stop affecting your score after one year, and fall off after two years.