Too many accounts

[Anonymous]

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@Anonymous wrote:

Sorry, but I have to disagree - the "too many accounts" Fico ding is very minimal. Often, it is given as a reason when there is nothing else available to use as a negative score factor. There are many people with 800+ Fico scores who have more than 30 accounts.

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If you keep agreeing with me you're going to get a rep. Not that I mind Brother Ike!

[haulingthescoreup]

I've been doing research on this "too many accounts" (reason code #28), and the word from the top is that it refers to both open and closed accounts.

Closing an account won't remove the ding. They have to wither up and fall off from old age, aka 10 years after closing. (EQ varying, of course.)

And it's a really, really weenie penalty. Yes, it exists, but it's not a big one. If you don't keep opening new accounts, your total number of accounts will lessen as old, closed ones fall off.

Frankly, I'd rather have the too many accounts ding with a healthy number of older accounts. I'm sweating the next few years when a lot of installment accounts fall off. I didn't get started with my own revolving credit until relatively recently. I'll be aging backwards, like Merlin, for much of the next decade.