Aging inquiries and new accounts

[MontegoMack]

I have inquiries and new accounts that have anniversaries on the 21st of this month and the 20th of August.

Are the anniversary dates (to age to a complete year and have less negative effect on CR and scores) the actual day or do they age to a year at the 1st of the anniversary month? In other words: 1 year old at July 1st or July 21st?

When do the CRAs update to reflect the 1 year mark?

Hope that makes sense and thanks in advance.

[Anonymous]

Accounts age based on the 1st of the month.  Example:

You open a Chase Freedom on March 28.  On March 29-31 it will be considered exactly 0 months old.  Not 0.07 months old, but exactly 0.  Then on April 1, FICO will consider it exactly 1 month old (even though it is in fact only 4 days old).

Inquiries are supposed to age based on the exact date.  Thus an inquiry dated Aug 20, 2016 would start being ignored by FICO on Aug 21, 2017. 

I am basing all this on the work of a lot of veterans here at the site.  There seems to be a fair amount of consensus about both things.

That said, I would personally never push something down to the wire.  If I really wanted an account to be considered an extra month old, I would not pull my score until the 2nd of the month.  If I wanted to be sure an inquiry was no longer counted I'd wait a year and 2 days.

[MontegoMack]

Thank you!

That was exactly what I was looking for.

[Anonymous]

I can confirm from personal data last week that inquiries become unscoreable at their anniversary date, or that the day after their anniversary date they stop impacting FICO scores.

[MontegoMack]

And while my milage may vary, about what is the average impact?

[Anonymous]

Impact to scores as inquiries become unscoreable?  Many factors go into it, but one of the biggest is how many scoreable inquiries you have total already.  If you're someone that has 14+ scoreable inquiries on your report and 1 or 2 become unscoreable, there will be no scoring change at all.  Many believe that there is "binning" of inquiries, meaning that 1-2 are counted the same way, 3-4, etc.  Some data supports binning, while other data goes against it.  If it does exist and you lose an inquiry, there's a chance you're still in the same bin and no score change will be seen.  It can also depend on bureau.  Some people report greater point gains/losses on specific bureaus with respect to inquiries.  Also clean vs dirty score card can play a role, where inquiries tend to impact clean files more than dirty ones in many cases.  Overall as a gross generalization I think it would be fair to say that an inquiry is worth "a couple of points" when it becomes unscoreable.  Hit has been shown though that this number can be zero, while others have reported 5-10 points. 

[MontegoMack]

These are my only inquiries. I'm more than willing to take up to 5-10 points. 

Thank you for helping me set realistic expectations. 

[Anonymous]

Sure thing.  Definitely report back here and let us know how it goes.