Originally Posted by
fikio
A key component of FICO scoring is the average account age. If you cancel any credit card, then the average account age will reflect that shorter history along with all of your other credit cards, and will continue to do so until 7 years after you canceled the card after which it will drop off and not be considered part of the average account age. Since persons have a variety of short-term factors that will affect the credit score, such as a car mortgage, student loans, etc, these are automatically decreasing the average account age, so to mitigate this 1 can hold credit cards for a long-time to increase the average.
I am NOT a credit expert by any means so I am really trying to understand... please be patiant
Wouldn't canceling any "newer" cards actually HELP the average history then?
I have 3 cards that are almost 20 years old and lots of newer cards. I know not to cancel the older cards of course but I plan on canceling most of my newer cards in the next few months, I guess I will see what it does to my credit as I go... My credit score averages about 730-750ish and don't want it below that, don't think I will ever get it much beyond there however, I inherited several properties so no need for a mortgage and never had a car loan, hard to boost your score without a mortgage. I really don't understand WHY having a car loan or a mortgage should make my score go up but have been told time and again that it would.... bleh...