AAoA bucketing

[Anonymous]

Is it possible that you score drops when your AAoA goes from 7 to 8 years, all else being equal?

[RobertEG]

Nope.  If it did, all else was not equal.,

[Anonymous]

I realize it is counteruntuitive, but I could find little else to explain an 8 point drop in the score when my AAoA briefly crossed 8 years. The change got nullified when the AAoA dropped back below 8 soon after because of a new card.

[Anonymous]

Is it possible your UTIL changed? Or possibly payment made after creditor/lender reported to CRA's?

[Anonymous]

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@Anonymous wrote:

Is it possible that you score drops when your AAoA goes from 7 to 8 years, all else being equal?

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Yes, it is possible to encounter a score drop with an increase in AAofA if you are rebucketed.

I am not aware of a definitive "cutoff" for AAofA categories - although there are a few estimates floating around.

[RobertEG]

There is, in my opinion,  major rebucketing, and there is minor rebucketing.

Which major bucket you are in depends on how you stand in each of the major FICO scoring categories.

Primary bucketing is, in my opinion, based on your CR with regard to your payment history. 

Payment history is 35% of your FICO score, and this suggests that major bucketing of your credit flle is bases, not on AAoA, but rather on whether you have major derogs in your CR that put you into a "dirty" vs a "clean" categorization.

The next most significant FICO cattefory util of credit, whiich is 30% of you FICO score, and this suggests that if your CR is "clean" of derogs, then % util might then be your next major bucketing consideration 

Length of credit, under which AAoA falls, is only 15% of FICO scoring, suggesting that it is not a major determination of bucketing impact.

Sure, you can be rebucketed based on improved AAoA, (there are at least a dozen bucket algorithms used for scoring),but, in my opinion, it is not a major consderation with any significant FICO impact.  It is only a small part of the bucket.

I cannot comprehend how, if your major bucketing was based on payment history or % util, how minor improvement in AAoA from 7 to 8 years could leadn to your being placed into a less favorable scoring category.

[Anonymous]

Robert, I can not comprehend it either. But I was carefully tracking my score and could not find any other explanation. I have a few minor deorgs. Maybe people with AAoA of 8+ have hardly any derogs at all, which would make me relatively look worse. 

[smallfry]

The few minor derogs would explain it. I know that FICO states high achievers have an AAofA of 6 plus but if you try the Estimator 5 8 10 are all mentioned.

[Anonymous]

So this puts me in a funny situation. About 3 months down the line, I seriously have to consider getting a new CC just to push my AAoA back to below 8.   And I suppose I have to keep doing that every 4-6 months until the minor derogs cease to cause the inverted AAoA behavior. The positive is that I can make the decision to push the AAoA back down after checking if the higher AAoA did indeed hurt my score. I feel positively retarded even thinking about this.

[haulingthescoreup]

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@Anonymous wrote:

So this puts me in a funny situation. About 3 months down the line, I seriously have to consider getting a new CC just to push my AAoA back to below 8.   And I suppose I have to keep doing that every 4-6 months until the minor derogs cease to cause the inverted AAoA behavior. The positive is that I can make the decision to push the AAoA back down after checking if the higher AAoA did indeed hurt my score. I feel positively retarded even thinking about this.

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No, no, no; it's not that bad!

Your score will recover soon, and now it has the potential to go higher.

It's like being promoted a grade early back in elementary school. There's some initial scrambling around to catch up, but you'll wind up way ahead of where you were.