What do I need to get to 800?

[Anonymous]

Sorry if this gets asked all the time (And I'm sure it does) and also sorry if it's the wrong place to ask, but I'm really curious.

A bit about myself - I'm 23 years old.  I started building my credit at the age of 18.  I was approved for 500 dollars for a PayPal card.  Within 6 months, my limit built up to 1500 and then about 6 months later I was approved for 900 dollars with an Amazon store card.  Both cards had perfect payment history, however I had trouble with my PayPal account since someone did a charge back on an eBay item that I couldn't afford to pay back.  Both my Amazon and PayPal account got closed due to too many returned payments (2 each).  I didn't get any baddies on my account.  Everything was still PIF on time and everything.  I don't know what my score was during this period.  So next up, a few months later in May 2012, I applied for a car loan and built my credit up over the next few years, getting my score up to around 719 before applying for another credit card.  I got a Discover card with a 4k limit and built that up over the next 9 months where my score peaked at around 736.  Then I opened an AMEX BCP in August 2015 and was approved for a 15k limit.  Both cards, I consistantly PIF every month.  My score boosted up to 760 over the next couple months.  Then in April 2016, I decided to pay off my car a year early so I paid the remaining 3k that I owed on my car.  My score dropped to 748. My AAoA dropped from around 2.1 years down to 1.2 years because of my car loan closing.  The score stayed stagnant for the next 2 months(It literally didn't move up or down a single point according to both my AMEX and Discover FICO statements).  And finally, in June 2016 (Like 3 weeks ago) I applied for the CSP and was approved for 5.4k.  My AAoA is now 9 months and my FICO score went up 1 point to 749 since signing up for the CSP.

tl;dr I can't seem to get above a score of 760 and I'm unsure what is all holding me back.

So I'm curious what I need to do to get it higher.  Is my AAoA the only thing holding me back?  I don't really have any interest in taking out a loan or anything like that, so my only types of credit are through credit cards.  Is it still possible to get to 800 without that?  All my cards are PIF every month, and I only let between 1-5% of my total limit show on my statement.

Any suggestions would be awesome.

[Anonymous]

The biggest answer here is going to be time.  Time is what will get your score to 800.  You're going to likely need at LEAST a 2 year AAoA, if not 3 in my opinion to get there with everything else being perfect along with it. 

Closing your car loan doesn't hurt your AAoA; FICO counts both open and closed accounts in your AAoA and closed accounts count into that average for 10 years after they are closed.

Closing your car loan DOES however hurt your FICO scores because in terms of "credit mix" you no longer have an active installment loan, only revolving accounts which can hurt you anywhere from 10-30 points (depending on how far the loan is paid down).  Look up the "share secure loan" thread on here and take a look at that.  If you follow the steps illustrated there and add an installment loan paid down to a very small percentage of the original balance you'll probably see a 20 point boost or so which will get you half way to where you want to be.

The rest will take time.  The good news is that anything over 760 is essentially the same in terms of FICO scoring; with a 780 score there's very few things in life you can't get that someone with scores in the 800's can.

[RonM21]

Agree. Time and patience, as well as continuing what you are doing will be key. You are in good position now, and in time it will come. Things just need to grow a bit and come together.