AAoA Question??

[Anonymous]

Hi everyone! So I am plan on applying for either a Discover It, Chase Freedom, or AMEX card here in the next upcoming months to make my credit file "thicker" My utilization is low, scores are good, etc. 

However, whenever I log into my Credit Karma account, I am shown that my "Avg. Age of Open Credit Lines" is 0.42 yr's.  Oddly, it says that my Bank of America card (first credit card) was opened up on Jun 2 and there were 5 months of reported payments. 

ALSO, whenever I go to the "Age of Credit History" tab, I see:

Average Account Age 0Yrs 5Mos
Oldest Open Account 0 Yrs 5 Mos
Newest Open Account 0 Yrs 5 Mos

Technically speaking, am I only at 5 months of reported credit history or am I 0.42? Help me understand, please! I want to app whenever I have a good 6 months of history to "look good in the eyes of the lenders."

[HiLine]

0.42 years is 5 months. 5 months divided by 12 months is 0.4166, rounded to 0.42.

[MarineVietVet]

---

@Anonymous wrote:

Hi everyone! So I am plan on applying for either a Discover It, Chase Freedom, or AMEX card here in the next upcoming months to make my credit file "thicker" My utilization is low, scores are good, etc. 

However, whenever I log into my Credit Karma account, I am shown that my "Avg. Age of Open Credit Lines" is 0.42 yr's.  Oddly, it says that my Bank of America card (first credit card) was opened up on Jun 2 and there were 5 months of reported payments. 

ALSO, whenever I go to the "Age of Credit History" tab, I see:

Average Account Age 0Yrs 5Mos
Oldest Open Account 0 Yrs 5 Mos
Newest Open Account 0 Yrs 5 Mos

Technically speaking, am I only at 5 months of reported credit history or am I 0.42? Help me understand, please! I want to app whenever I have a good 6 months of history to "look good in the eyes of the lenders."

---

Ignore all that nonsense from CK. They only use open accounts in their calculations of AAoA.

For FICO 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.

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.

[takeshi74]

---

@Anonymous wrote:

Technically speaking, am I only at 5 months of reported credit history or am I 0.42?

---

0.42 years is 5 months.  12 months * 0.42 = 5.04 months.

That said, CK provides Average Age of Open Accounts, not Average Age of Accounts.  FICO and creditors rely on AAoA, not AAoOA.  AAoA includes all closed accounts on your report.  If that card is the only account on your report then it is also your AAoA.  Otherwise you can manually calculate your AAoA using the report data.  Excel and its date functions can be helpful if you don't want to do the math by hand.

---

@Anonymous wrote:

Oddly, it says that my Bank of America card (first credit card) was opened up on Jun 2 and there were 5 months of reported payments.

---

How is that odd?  It is currently November.  For an account opened in June I'd expect to see 4-5 reported months depending on the date that account reports.