Inquiries aging to 6 months -- 4 points? Some data...

[Anonymous]

So, my score went up by 4 points today, to 712 on Experian, as reported on the Experian website. 

At first this confused me -- nothing happened today. I monitor all three bureaus, I can pull them daily, and I pulled them all yesterday and then pulled them all again today. Nothing changed. No balance posted. I have no derogatories or late payments to age off -- my file is very simple, it's just some accounts, all newer than a year, and some inquiries. Nothing else in my file. 

So I thought this was FICO randomness but I have always been able to explain every other change in my score, so I did some digging. I found the HP my landlord did when I rented my place aged to six months TODAY. Yesterday on Experian I had 5 inquiries all of which were newer than 6 months (and two more that are 7-9 months old). Today that landlord HP aged to 6 months and my score went up by 4 points. 

So it looks like either an inquiry aging to 6 months is worth 4 points, or perhaps it's reducing from 5 to 4 such inquiries that helped my score. 

Just thought I'd share what I noticed.

[cdtotten]

IMO, most likely reason for the jump was your AAoA went up 1 month.

[Anonymous]

Hmm. My spreadsheet says AAoA is not likely the factor -- my AAoA went from 4 months 22 days to 4 months 23 days. Doesn't seem like that would bump things.

HOWEVER, your comment made me look at account age more closely and you might be on to something. It looks like my oldest account rounded the 9 month bend that day as well. So the change in score might be from the oldest account hitting the 9 month mark? 

If so that's still interesting data.

[Anonymous]

OK, and now there's more evidence that this is indeed an account age issue and not an inquiries thing.

Today my Equifax score increased 12 points on a small balance increase (Amazon store card updates balance after every purchase it seems). 

The inquiry that aged to 6 months only appeared on my Experian report, and not on my Equifax report, so it's clear that the change with Equifax is not realated to inquiries, and since the AAoA in question did not hit any month mark (just aged a few days) it would seem to strongly imply this is the result of my oldest account hitting the 9 month mark.

So, what this seems to imply is that your oldest account hitting 9 months is a significant event. I wonder if every 3 months is significant -- 6, 9, 12, 18, etc.

[Revelate]

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@cdtotten wrote:

IMO, most likely reason for the jump was your AAoA went up 1 month.

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AAOA is rounded down to nearest year in the calculations.

[Anonymous]

My score shot up over 20 points when my inquiries were 6 months old.  Who knows, maybe we'll get another when they age to 12 months. 

[rlx01]

INQs hurt less at 6 months and then stop hurting at 12 months.

[Anonymous]

The number of inquiries plays a role as well. I lost 2 pts on TU for my last inq 4 on EX and exactly 0 on EQ. nothing else changed (each had updated within 2 days for abalance change prior to that inq). There is obviously some sort of metric that values an inq, BUT each inq is not as valuable as the one that came before it. The 47th inq on a report would not do the same damage as the first. (Look at some of the people with 60 inquiries.) The inverse says that if you have 1 inq it may have cost you (just to toss a number out there) 8 pts. At 6 months maybe you get 5 back. At 8 months 1 more. etc. But if you have say 10 inq all at various stages of getting closer to costing you 0, each one matters fractionally less each day. So you may not have gotten 4 back for that reason. Not to mention, if you have cards reporting 0 balances you don't get an update for each time it posts, so just another OK for a zero balance month may have played a part in some of those 4 pts. Even if every one of us got an update literally every time our scores changed (not just on the triggering events like we get now) we would still fail to recreate the algorithm just because there are so many variables that could potentially knock us off track.

For example, I believe that one card reporting 3% is my sweet spot. BUT I have 3 cards that close the same day. IF my discover which is the one I let show a balance reports just ahead of cap1 and BOA one month, I could be mislead into thinking that month 5% worked worse. the next month BOA reports my 0 balance, then discover then CAP1. and my 3% balance looks better, but its because I got another OK in before the balance change triggered the update. Then the next month BOA AND Cap1 beat discover which reported 8% and I got another boost. The data doesnt show to me... they all report the same day, but so even with monitoring my actual reports, I have no way of knowing which hit the system first.

As much as I would love to know the nuts and bolts (just because I enjoy crazy weird maths) without having a billion actuarial tables and some serious computing power anecdotal data points make a very limited argument for calling any individual theory plausible. The accepted generalizations we can prove to be mostly true, but specifics make every detail relevant to only your own account and only at that one instant in time.

[jamie123]

In my opinion your small point gain is directly related to your credit card aging to 9 months. You get nicked points for every account that is less than 2 years old in FICO calculations. An account isn't fully seasoned in FICO's eyes until it is 2 years old.

[Anonymous]

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@rlx01 wrote:
INQs hurt less at 6 months and then stop hurting at 12 months.

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I have heard that and I am looking for data to support that belief, but so far I don't see it. I've got more that will roll over the 6 month mark soon, and I"ll keep watching. 

It seems I have strong data to support "something" happening when your oldest card hits 9 months, what happens seems to depend on how many inquiries you have. I saw a bigger gain on my Equifax report (with fewer inquiries) than on my Experian report (with more inquiries).