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On my latest credit pull my average age of accounts is 8 years, with my longest account being 18 + years old. I'm working on all factors that contribute to my credit score and currently my avg age of accounts is rated as Good. I would like to get to very good or excellent. Question I have is, if I have 3 newer cards that I don't need, don't plan to use all opened in 2014, if I were to close those accounts would that improve my average age of accounts?
Once you open an account, it doesn't matter if you close or not, your AAoA is already affected. No point closing the accounts unless you don't need it and has AF. If you close it, closed account would stay on your CR for 10 years.
@anewme35 wrote:On my latest credit pull my average age of accounts is 8 years, with my longest account being 18 + years old. I'm working on all factors that contribute to my credit score and currently my avg age of accounts is rated as Good. I would like to get to very good or excellent. Question I have is, if I have 3 newer cards that I don't need, don't plan to use all opened in 2014, if I were to close those accounts would that improve my average age of accounts?
No, you cannot improve AAoA by closing accounts. All OC accounts, both open and closed are factored into AAoA. Just be patient and let time do its work. 8 years is already a pretty decent AAoA, you're just not likely to see big point gains by stretching it out more.
Will close the accounts hurt utilization as well? To explain better, will cosing accounts such as credit cards deduct the dollar value from your available amount? I hope this makes sense. LOL
@Anonymous wrote:Will close the accounts hurt utilization as well? To explain better, will cosing accounts such as credit cards deduct the dollar value from your available amount? I hope this makes sense. LOL
Yes, it will.
You can call the creditor and additionally request that, upon closing the account, they report deletion of the entire account with the CRA.
Deletion obviously will remove from AAoA scoring. It is, however, discretionary on the part of the creditor.
I just had a crazy thought somewhat. If OP was to remove TLs from his CR, would that make his AAoA go up as they will have fewer accounts? Just asking as I have no idea on how this works.
The most agist part of this whole thing. Other than young people don't have the money to take it to court, this really is unconstitutional.
@Anonymous wrote:The most agist part of this whole thing. Other than young people don't have the money to take it to court, this really is unconstitutional.
Really? Based on what??? There's no constitutional right to have credit. SMH.
One factor in the scoring of AAoA that really, in my opinion, is unfair stems from the CRA policy of arbitrarily deleting accounts that have been closed for approx. ten years.
While I understand the CRA position in wanting to retrieve database capacity, and their assumption that accounts closed for ten years have likely already had all derogs exlcuded from credit reports, and thus have dubious value to the customers, that assumes that only creditors are their customers.
We consumers are ignored in their decision to delete, and its clear affect on AAoA and oldest account in length of credit scoring.
Accounts subjectively deleted by the CRAs are almost always older than the consumer's current average age of accounts, and thus their deletion will lower consumer AAoA, and often also remove their oldest account. Consumer affect is ignored by the CRAs.
Perhaps they could restain only the account name and open date, thus permitting the continued scoring of its age.........