Data Point: Age of Youngest Account

[Anonymous]

My DW's  youngest account (a credit card)  turned 1year old today.  I'm an AU on her card  and it is also my youngest account. I  pulled the $1 CCT  3B  F8s last night and got our free monthly Fico 8s from experian.com  today.   Result:

Ex F8	10/31	11/01
Me	813	813
DW	813	823

We are married since 28 years, haven't moved for 27 years  and are AUs on virtually  all of  of each others card.  So far I always thought  Fico 8 fully counts my AU  cards.  For example my  total utilization, not counting AU cards,  went from below 9% to over  10%  two months ago and I did not see a drop in my Fico 8's.   Could it be that AU cards  can count for utilization but are  always excluded  from AoYA?

I will refresh my Fico 8s at CCT in six days and report the results on my  TU and Eq F8s

[SouthJamaica]

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@Anonymous wrote:

My DW's  youngest account (a credit card)  turned 1year old today.  I'm an AU on her card  and its is also my youngest account. I  pulled the $1 CCT  3B  F8s last night and get our free monthly Fico 8s from experian.com  today.   Result:

Ex F8	10/31	11/01
Me	813	813
DW	813	823

We are married since 28 years, haven't moved for 27 years  and are AUs on virtually  all of  of each others card.  So far I always thought  Fico 8 fully counts my AU  cards.  For example my  total utilization, not counting AU cards,  went from below 9% to over  10%  two months ago and I did not see a drop in my Fico 8's.   Could it be that AU cards  can count for utilization but are  always excluded  from AoYA?

I will refresh my Fico 8s at CCT in six days and report the results on my  TU and Eq F8s

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Thanks for the info.

[Anonymous]

Do you have a younger account on your CR that isn't on hers? Perhaps her AoYA reached 12 months, but yours didn't.

[Anonymous]

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@Anonymous wrote:
Do you have a younger account on your CR that isn't on hers? Perhaps her AoYA reached 12 months, but yours didn't.

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As I said in my original post, her account is also my youngest.  My second youngest is one of my own  and is 14 months old.

Unfortunately, since I'm using several 0% balance transfer offers , I cannot  use  the  "All zero penalty" test to see  whether Fico 8 counts my AU accounts.  

[Anonymous]

I would not rule out the possibility that FICO 8 is ignoring some or all of the AU accounts.  The reason you had initially ruled that possibility out is because your credit monitoring service (Credit Check Total) implies on its front-end "summary" page that the AU cards are counted toward the total credit limit.

The front-end "summary" page of a CMS is no guide to what the true FICO algorithm is doing on the back end.  That summary page was made by programmers who work for CCT, not for FICO.  Even the summary page for the myFICO Ultimate CMS cannot be used to reliably infer what the back-end scoring algorithm is doing, especially with respect to AU accounts.

There is, however, a fairly straightforward way to test whether an AU account is being ignored by FICO 8.  I described it recently on another thread.  Let me know if you want to know more about it.

[Anonymous]

PPS.  You and I were posting our comments at the same time.  I see that you know about the All Zero test for AUs.  Until you are able to implement that test there's no way to know what is going on (as far as I can tell) though I'd lean toward assuming that you have one or more AU accounts being ignore by FICO 8.  That happens a lot with FICO 8, and it sounds like the simplest explanation.

[Anonymous]

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@Anonymous wrote:

 The reason you had initially ruled that possibility out is because your credit monitoring service (Credit Check Total) implies on its front-end "summary" page that the AU cards are counted toward the total credit limit.

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I never pay much attention to the summary pages  of credit montoring services.  In fact,  experian gives me  different information on different  pages. Some  pages include  the AU accounts others do not.

The utilization information I refered to in my first post are based on my own calculation. Two months ago my util  (counting or not counting AU accounts)  was below 9 %.  I did a 0% balance transfer into my bank account. The util  counting AU accounts  stayed  below 9%,  but not counting the AU accounts  rose above 10%.   And I did not notice any major change in  Fico scores at the time.  But I just realized  that at the same time the  youngest of  my own accounts turned 12 months olds. So there might have been some offsetting effects.

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 Until you are able to implement that test there's no way to know what is going on (as far as I can tell) though I'd lean toward assuming that you have one or more AU accounts being ignore by FICO 8.  That happens a lot with FICO 8, and it sounds like the simplest explanation.

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Implementing AZEO would cost me  hundreds of dollars.  I'm curious about the Fico algorithm, but not that curious.

I agree, it looks like Fico 8 ignores my AU accounts, but that does really surpise me. If they  ignore my AU accounts, I don't see how they could count  anybody's AU accounts. 

[Anonymous]

The "anti-abuse" module for FICO 8 was tacked on very late (just shortly before the model's release or perhaps even after).  FICO had planned to ignore all AU accounts entirely in the new model but there was such a wild reaction against that idea (I call it the Housewives Rebellion -- people who's only cards were AUs on their husband's cards) that FICO backed off and came up with its AA module (the details of which are cloaked in the deepest secrecy).

The point being is that it was developed fast and no doubt makes mistakes: e.g. people like you and your wife are supposed to be the people FICO wants to leave in.  Likewise it often makes mistakes and leaves some people in who FICO likely wanted to exclude.

Great insight on your part about what happened with your utilization and your AoYA.  There could indeed have been an offsetting effect.

I of course have no dog in this race and would not be surprised if FICO 8 counts all your AUs (or if it counts some and not others, or if it counts none).  I am just saying that we have confounding factors and until we have a clear test we cannot really know. 

Is your current utilization (not counting the AU cards) still greater than 9.001% with the utilization counting the AUs still under 8.99%?  If so, you may want to repeat your test again in 2019 when you approach a month with no confounding factors.  And of course, only if you feel like it.

[Anonymous]

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Is your current utilization (not counting the AU cards) still greater than 9.001% with the utilization counting the AUs still under 8.99%?  If so, you may want to repeat your test again in 2019 when you approach a month with no confounding factors.  And of course, only if you feel like it.

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I'm financing my kids' college  education on 0% balance transfers (rather than using my savings or my Heloc). The very last  tuition payment is due in December and   I just did  another 0% balance transfer to my bank account.  Once it reports,    also   my utilization  counting the AU cards will be above 10%.  If my Fico 8 scores  do not drop then, it would be futher evidence that Fico 8 ignores my AU cards.

But after that my util  (counting or not counting AU cards) will stay above 10% for quite a while. So  I won't be able to do any more test.