AAoA. What's Optimal, Good, OK, and Bad

[Revelate]

Huh, well got an interesting datapoint from TU; no inquiries fell off there and no utilization change, but with the start of the month I went from 35 months to 36 months AAOA potentially, and nothing in the tradeline data hit a year boundary... oldest account doesn't tick over an annual boundary for another 2 months.

+6 points.

Possible AAOA change, neither additional inquiries nor new tradelines have hit my report from mortgage / small spree.

[Anonymous]

Update in your signature?

[Revelate]

---

@Anonymous wrote:

Update in your signature?

---

Nah I still have my mortgage scores in my siggy .

Won't get a clean datapoint when my Freedom reports as a result of the likely AAOA change and testing a 87% individual tradeline balance, but will update after I pay it and Chase reports $0 again.  Not likely to be tracking my mortgage scores much after my mortgage actually reports but for me it's going to be an absurdly busy time on my credit report over the next two months so not so excited to be updating my siggy that often haha.

Might get a sooner trigger on EX if JCB pulls it.

[Anonymous]

My advice is if you are considering a mortgage in 2015 to not take out any other credit cards or loans at this time. It can hurt you in the eyes of s mortgage loan officer. Keep your cards below 30% and hold off until your close.

[Anonymous]

I got 2 amex cards each with a 5k limit about 5 months ago. Getting these 2 cards basically tripled my total credit limit, but lowered my AAoA to below 2 years. Score dropped according to creditkarma's new account scoring (not vantage 3.0) an average of 20-30 points for the next 2-3 months. Part of that was from the 2 hard inquiries amex hit me with, and spending some extra cash to help a friend in trouble, but 2 years seems to be one of the milestone/score bump points... I just got a discover card with 4500 limit, which may lower my AAoA back down to 2, or possibly below 2 years again.... So I'll try to remember to report what happens when that finally hits my credit score.

[Thomas_Thumb]

---

@Revelate wrote:

There's no set standard.

<2 years, basement.

>2 - 5 years: OK

5+ there's pretty significant diminishing returns.

I guess optimal would be the minimum AAOA it takes to hit 850, and don't know if anyone has tracked their scores closely enough over time to get to 850 and see where the magic threshold number is.

---

I don't know the exact threshold for top score but, I suspect an AAoA above 8 years is sufficient. My guess for Fico AAoA categories is:

Excellent = more than 8

Good = 5 to 8

Fair = 2 to 4

Poor = less than 2

For comparison pasted below is what VantageScore 3.0 uses (taken from the CK web site).

9+ Years	EXCELLENT
7-8 Years	GOOD
5-6 Years	FAIR
2-4 Years	POOR
< 2 Years	VERY POOR
No Info	N/A

[NRB525]

---

@Thomas_Thumb wrote:

---

@Revelate wrote:

There's no set standard.

<2 years, basement.

>2 - 5 years: OK

5+ there's pretty significant diminishing returns.

I guess optimal would be the minimum AAOA it takes to hit 850, and don't know if anyone has tracked their scores closely enough over time to get to 850 and see where the magic threshold number is.

---

I don't know the exact threshold for top score but, I suspect an AAoA above 8 years is sufficient. My guess for Fico AAoA categories is:

Excellent = more than 8

Good = 5 to 8

Fair = 2 to 4

Poor = less than 2

For comparison pasted below is what VantageScore 3.0 uses (taken from the CK web site).

9+ Years	EXCELLENT
7-8 Years	GOOD
5-6 Years	FAIR
2-4 Years	POOR
< 2 Years	VERY POOR
No Info	N/A

---

I'm not clear on how AAoA could be judged "very poor" if someone is just starting out, unless that is relative to 850: "No 850 for you!". It only makes sense that one does not start out at 850, but a new file at 700 is not "very poor". It's also likely only an issue in extreme cases. Adding another credit card that has useful rewards or a valuable sign up bonus or a 0% APR is one of those situations where the actual financial benefits of the card should outweigh the scoring concerns. Adding 10 cards in a spree, that's a different story, but then the cardholder should realize they are done adding any credit for a long time.

[Thomas_Thumb]

---

@NRB525 wrote:

---

@Thomas_Thumb wrote:

---

---

I don't know the exact threshold for top score but, I suspect an AAoA above 8 years is sufficient. My guess for Fico AAoA categories is:

Excellent = more than 8

Good = 5 to 8

Fair = 2 to 4

Poor = less than 2

For comparison pasted below is what VantageScore 3.0 is reported to go by (taken from the CK web site).

9+ Years	EXCELLENT
7-8 Years	GOOD
5-6 Years	FAIR
2-4 Years	POOR
< 2 Years	VERY POOR
No Info	N/A

---

I'm not clear on how AAoA could be judged "very poor" if someone is just starting out, unless that is relative to 850: "No 850 for you!". It only makes sense that one does not start out at 850, but a new file at 700 is not "very poor". It's also likely only an issue in extreme cases. Adding another credit card that has useful rewards or a valuable sign up bonus or a 0% APR is one of those situations where the actual financial benefits of the card should outweigh the scoring concerns. Adding 10 cards in a spree, that's a different story, but then the cardholder should realize they are done adding any credit for a long time.

---

The table comes from Credit Karma for VantageScore 3.0 categories. The categories are presented here for reference only. They are not FICO

Here are some other factors with category breakdown CK lists - FWIW. View the data accordingly.

Aggregate utilization (VS 3.0 from CK)

0-9%	EXCELLENT
10-29%	GOOD
30-49%	FAIR
50-74%	POOR
75+%	VERY POOR
No Info	N/A

# of accounts (open + closed) for VS 3.0 from CK

21+	EXCELLENT
11-20	GOOD
6-10	POOR
0-5	VERY POOR

I have 10 accounts and therefore rate poor according to this table - Oh well.

# Credit Inquiries for VS 3.0 from CK

0	EXCELLENT
1-2	GOOD
3-4	FAIR
5-8	POOR
9+	VERY POOR

[Revelate]

I don't know that we can rate CK as equivalent to VS TT.

They had those metrics before they switched to the VS 3.0 algorithm.  I wouldn't put any stock into that at all as a result.

[Anonymous]

---

@NRB525 wrote:

---

@Thomas_Thumb wrote:

---

@Revelate wrote:

There's no set standard.

<2 years, basement.

>2 - 5 years: OK

5+ there's pretty significant diminishing returns.

I guess optimal would be the minimum AAOA it takes to hit 850, and don't know if anyone has tracked their scores closely enough over time to get to 850 and see where the magic threshold number is.

---

I don't know the exact threshold for top score but, I suspect an AAoA above 8 years is sufficient. My guess for Fico AAoA categories is:

Excellent = more than 8

Good = 5 to 8

Fair = 2 to 4

Poor = less than 2

For comparison pasted below is what VantageScore 3.0 uses (taken from the CK web site).

9+ Years	EXCELLENT
7-8 Years	GOOD
5-6 Years	FAIR
2-4 Years	POOR
< 2 Years	VERY POOR
No Info	N/A

---

I'm not clear on how AAoA could be judged "very poor" if someone is just starting out, unless that is relative to 850: "No 850 for you!". It only makes sense that one does not start out at 850, but a new file at 700 is not "very poor". It's also likely only an issue in extreme cases. Adding another credit card that has useful rewards or a valuable sign up bonus or a 0% APR is one of those situations where the actual financial benefits of the card should outweigh the scoring concerns. Adding 10 cards in a spree, that's a different story, but then the cardholder should realize they are done adding any credit for a long time.

---

Hello NRB!  I haven't seen the actual verbiage from the CK website, but my guess is that those are just convenient verbal handles to describe rough ranges where you are getting more and more FICO points for a particular credit scoring factor.  In that sense, the words are not judgmental (e.g. "very poor" doesn't mean 'You have done a very poor job at managing your credit -- shame on you" not does it mean you have a low overall score, since you may be doing well in other areas).  Those verbal handles just describe increasing levels of benefit to one's score from this one factor:

Very poor: You are being not rewarded with any points from this particular factor (but get a little more age and you will)

Poor: you are gaining some points but not many

Fair = you are gaining more points still

Good = More points still

Excellent = You are within a point of getting the most points you could ever get from this factor

Not sure if anyone on the thread has mentioned this yet (my apologies if someone did) but FICO's published statistics on its "high achievers" is that they have an AAoA of approximately 11 years.  If I read that right, FICO's looked at a big sample of people with a score of 800 or more, and then looked at the average AAoA of that group, which they say is about 11.  (They also observe that another factor -- age of oldest account -- is typically 25 years).

David Howe and others have published all of their factors when they achieved a perfect 850.  Howe reports he had an AAoA of 11 years when he finally hit 850.

The FICO high achiever data plus the data from people from Howe (and others) makes me suspect that you probably still get an advantage even up to 11, but that you may not get one after that.  On the other hand, AAoA is only one age-related factor: "age of oldest account" is another which you no doubt get beneit from into much higher integer values than 11.