Lowest possible AAoA with score over 800?

[Anonymous]

I was wondering, what examples are there of people having a relatively low average age of accounts yet having an 800+ score? I'm wondering if everything else is nearly perfect besides that factor, what is the highest scores we've seen?

Also, let's say the AAoA is over 5-7 years, and everything else is perfect, but there's too many inquiries and new acocunts. What's the highest estimated FICO then?

[Anonymous]

Shooting from the hip here, I'd say an 800 score is able to be achieved with a ~2 year AAoA.  When my AAoA was 2 years though, I wasn't monitoring my scores so I can't say for sure.  Hopefully others will weigh in on it with their specific data points.  I'm fairly certain from reading on this forum though that people with around a 2 year AAoA have reported a score of ~800, so long as all of the other pieces of the FICO pie were maxed out favorably.

The second part of your question, I think plenty of people have reported 800+ scores with tons of inquiries.  When you're talking someone with a 830-850 score, for example, they can take on a ton of inquries and not drop out of the 800's because there are dramatically diminishing returns on additional inquiries.  I think somewhere in the 10-14 range and it no longer matters... like there's no difference between having 14 inquiries or 114 in terms of scoring.  Thick/aged files can absorb inquiries and new accounts quite easily as that portion of the FICO pie is a relatively thin slice and doesn't impact score immensely.

[Thomas_Thumb]

2 years AAoA is sufficient for a Fico 8 score over 800 - if other factors are in-line. The actual minimum AAoA threshold is likely influenced by age of file (oldest account).

For example someone with an age of oldest under 5 years might need a higher AAoA than someone else with an age of oldest over 10 years.

[Anonymous]

Right.  Also it would be recommended to not have your AoYA < 1 year, which if you have a bunch of inquiries may suggest that you've opened an account within the last year which could hold back scores a little more than would otherwise be the case.

[Anonymous]

To piggyback on TT's helpful observation, Age of Oldest is one of the three factors used in assigning people to "clean" scorecards.

The scoring algorithm in many ways may differ depending on what scorecard one is in.  (Not just AAoA.)

[Anonymous]

Makes a lot of sense to me on AoOa.  It's why I keep my worst CC account open because my oldest account (11 years, closed) is due to fall off any month now, and my next oldest is 4 years 10 months but I dont want to close it since it has no AF -- just no rewards and no benefits so it sits in the SD and gets a $5 charge every month that I PIF immediately after posting.  Eventually my new accounts will age enough that I can close that one and get 10 years of benefits but I'm cautious with my calculations.

Even with a dirty profile it's still 4-5 years away from me being in prime territory (AAoA over 5 years, AoOa over 10 years, etc).  Lots of patience here, I'll be almost 50 by the time I cross the thresholds and my remaining 1 derogatory will drop off for certain.  Loooooong wait, glad I have no reason to seek credit other than getting that tasty cashback.

[Anonymous]

I have two old no-annual-fee credit cards from back in 2004 (a Chase and a BOA).  I never closed them even when they were useless from the perspective of rewards (etc.)  And I chose to do that precisely because they were my two oldest cards. 

I finally got around to making them useful.  The Chase Slate was PC'd to a Freedom (5% back on groceries this quarter!) and the BOA was PC'd to a BBR ($120 annually on free cash).  But even if they were still "useless" I would keep them open forever because they are a lot older than my others.

There's only one reason I'd ever close a no-AF card that was far older than most of my other cards.  And that is if it were a store card.  And even then I might not do it.

[newhis]

DW hit 800 (TU FICO) with age of oldest account 2.8 years and AAoA of 2 years.

Last app 11 months before that.

At that point EX FICO was 797 (I guess the HP from last app still hurt a little).

2 weeks later EX FICO reported 800, the HP was 1 yo.

[Anonymous]

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@newhis wrote:

DW hit 800 (TU FICO) with age of oldest account 2.8 years and AAoA of 2 years.

Last app 11 months before that.

At that point EX FICO was 797 (I guess the HP from last app still hurt a little).

2 weeks later EX FICO reported 800, the HP was 1 yo.

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So was the inquiry 11 months old and the account (assuming approval) also 11 months old associated with it?  If that's the case, did the inquiry and account hit the 1 year mark at the same time?  If so, points could have been received both for the inquiry becoming unscoreable as well as AoYA reaching 1 year rather than being < 1 year, right?

[NRB525]

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@Anonymous wrote:

Right.  Also it would be recommended to not have your AoYA < 1 year, which if you have a bunch of inquiries may suggest that you've opened an account within the last year which could hold back scores a little more than would otherwise be the case.

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Hmmm.

So I wonder how thick the file would need to be, to not come well below AAoA 1 year, if someone apped 114 new cards. 

To state it it more clearly, someone over 800 who insisted on app sprees of even 10 new accounts would most certainly see a significant score hit to the mid-700's, from both the INQ and once the new accounts began reporting.