Does credit score increase with utilizing every card every month vs sparingly?

[wdkwang]

Thanks so much for clarifying that. Super kudos to you!

[Anonymous]

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@wdkwang
As a followup, my aooa is 18 years and aaoa is now 5 years after opening 8 tradelines in the last 2 years.

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In regard to your desire to achieve an 850, your contraint above is going to be your AAoA.  Your AoOA is already > 17 years, so you're set there.  As far as AAoA goes, I'm not sure if anyone has reported an 850 with an AAoA of under 7 years.  I believe that 7.5-7.8+ will get you max points for that factor, but I know some people have reported an 850 with an AAoA in the 7.0-7.4 year range.  I'm not sure about less, but I think it would be very rare if not impossible to see one at under 7 years AAoA.  That being said, it would seem you're you're around 2 years away from being able to grab that 850, assuming you open no other new accounts during that time that would cause a further AAoA drop (or old accounts falling off during that time).

[wdkwang]

That's definitely new info to me regarding 850 with a AAoA of 7 years as I've been seeing guides say 9 to 11+ years. But if it ends up being 7 then even better.
After seeing areas of improvement on a recent credit report, it looks like i can also benefit from increasing the number of accounts and having more diversity as i do not have any recent loans or mortgages.
Before your last reply, i was considering switching up the strategy and delaying the 850 goal for a little longer. Idea is to have at least 21 active cards that will age to form a strong foundation, then churn any additional annual fee cards. Based on my spreadsheet, itll take another 7 years to reach AAoA 7 years. Decisions decisions...
Regardless this forum has been nothing but great so far. A lot of knowledgeable guys such as yourself. I'm learning a lot.

[Anonymous]

Very glad we are being able to help!  My comments below in blue.

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@wdkwang wrote:
That's definitely new info to me regarding 850 with a AAoA of 7 years as I've been seeing guides say 9 to 11+ years. But if it ends up being 7 then even better.

After seeing areas of improvement on a recent credit report, it looks like i can also benefit from increasing the number of accounts and having more diversity as i do not have any recent loans or mortgages.

Ignore the "advice" you get from credit monitoring tools that encourage you to add more and more cards.  They do this because they hope you will click on one of their links.  When you do that, the CC issuer gives them a monetary kickback.  It's outrageous that they give bogus and in many cases harmful advice to their visitors for the money they can get from the big CC companies, but this is indeed what they do.

More reliable is the advice you get from people here.

You observe that you have "no recent loans or mortgages."  Do you mean that you have no open loans?  Having a recent loan (as in recently opened) does not in itself help you.  But if you have no open loans (including auto leases, etc.) then we can give you a painless way to get the rest of the scoring points you want.

Before your last reply, i was considering switching up the strategy and delaying the 850 goal for a little longer. Idea is to have at least 21 active cards that will age to form a strong foundation, then churn any additional annual fee cards.

I see no problem with you delaying your 850 goal... forever if you like.  The only reason to pursue it is for the ego boost.  ("All is vanity!" -- Ecclesiastes)  An 850 score gives you no advantage in approval probability or best terms over someone with a 780. 

If you think you could engage in profitable bonus chasing for cards, however, that can be very rewarding (as long as you make certain you are not being induced to increase your spending in any way).  Churning, which you mention, is a specific sub-species of bonus chasing, wherein you open a particular card, get the bonus, close it, and then repeat the process with that particular make/model of card.  Some cards are churnable (you can get the bonus several times) and some are not.  You can still chase bonuses even if you never churn a single card.

Your idea of having 21 open cards as a scoring strategy is misguided.  That will harm your score, not help it.  Once a person has a dozen accounts total (open and closed) of which at least 8 are open, there is no scoring advantage to having more accounts.  And indeed some FICO models begin to penalize you for having a really large number of accounts. 

And truly, once a person has six accounts (open or closed), with three open cards, he should forget about adding more cards as a scoring strategy.

Based on my spreadsheet, itll take another 7 years to reach AAoA 7 years. Decisions decisions...
Regardless this forum has been nothing but great so far. A lot of knowledgeable guys such as yourself. I'm learning a lot.

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[Anonymous]

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@wdkwang
That's definitely new info to me regarding 850 with a AAoA of 7 years as I've been seeing guides say 9 to 11+ years. But if it ends up being 7 then even better.
After seeing areas of improvement on a recent credit report, it looks like i can also benefit from increasing the number of accounts and having more diversity as i do not have any recent loans or mortgages.
Before your last reply, i was considering switching up the strategy and delaying the 850 goal for a little longer. Idea is to have at least 21 active cards that will age to form a strong foundation, then churn any additional annual fee cards. Based on my spreadsheet, itll take another 7 years to reach AAoA 7 years. Decisions decisions...
Regardless this forum has been nothing but great so far. A lot of knowledgeable guys such as yourself. I'm learning a lot.

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An AAoA of 9+ years is not necessary for an 850 score.  Many people (myself included) have hit 850 with 7+ years AAoA.  Now, I can't say that 9 years or 11 years wouldn't result in a slightly better scoring benefit over 7+ years... it very well may help a few more points... but 7+ is enough in the AAoA department to get you there.

21 active cards is complete overkill and unnecessary.  5 cards is more than enough to get you to your 850 goal.  I have 7-8 active cards depending on bureau and there are times that I think about closing a couple of them.

[wdkwang]

CreditGuyInDixie, i have no open loans. Theres just 2 remaining closed student loans from 7-8 years ago. Never had an auto loan or mortgage. What did you mean when you mentioned a painless way to get the rest of the points?

[Medic981]

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@wdkwang wrote:
As a followup, my aooa is 18 years and aaoa is now 5 years after opening 8 tradelines in the last 2 years.

I just read about AZEO and its method as you guys have described to me. Although i know how to do it now, i dont understand why it works. My logic prior tells me it's better to show at least a $1 balance on all cards and pay off in full each month. I also figured if only 1 card is showing activity, and with such a small balance (ie $5), it'll show creditors that i'm not utilizing enough esp if most of my tradeline CL range from $25-34k. Any clarification would be helpful. Thank you

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"A bank is a place that will lend you money if you can prove that you don't need it."

Bob Hope

[Anonymous]

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@wdkwangWhat did you mean when you mentioned a painless way to get the rest of the points?

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CGID is referring to the addition of a secured loan, or the SSL technique.  If you're interested in it he's definitely the best guy to point you in the right direction.

[wdkwang]

I'm 100% interested in hearing more!

[iv]

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@Anonymous wrote:

Retirement will not in itself have any impact on your FICO score.  Employment status is not collected on the Big Three credit reports and only things collected on reports can be included in one's score. 

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To be completely accurate, employment status IS collected on CRA reports (not reliably, and only when reported by a lender as part of an application)... I've got two entries for employment on Transunion (one from a mortgage app in 2002, the other from a car loan in 2012), and two on Experian (undated, apparently). There have been plenty of other mortgage, auto, and card apps between 2002 and now, but those are the only ones that got recorded.

But regardless, employment status as recorded on the CRA reports still isn't factored into scoring, true. (Possibly because of how spotty the data is.)