Credit age is how long your credit accounts have been open, and it matters because length of credit history makes up 15% of a FICO score and folds into a “depth of credit” category worth about 20% of a VantageScore.1myFICO. How Scores Are Calculated2VantageScore. The Complete Guide to Your VantageScore 4.0 Credit Score A longer track record gives lenders more data to judge how reliably you handle debt, which quietly shapes the interest rates and credit limits you’re offered.
What Credit Age Actually Measures
People use “credit age” and “length of credit history” interchangeably, but scoring models treat them as related yet distinct. Length of credit history is the umbrella term. FICO breaks it into three sub-factors: the age of your oldest account, the age of your newest account, and the average age of all your accounts.3Experian. How Does Length of Credit History Affect Credit Score When most people say “credit age,” they mean that average, which is the single number that shifts every time you open or close an account.
Your oldest account anchors your credit timeline. Someone whose oldest card dates back 20 years looks fundamentally different to a scoring model than someone whose history starts two years ago. Your newest account matters for the opposite reason: a very recent account signals that you just took on new risk, which weighs against you slightly. The average blends the two extremes into one figure that represents your overall experience level.
How the Average Age of Your Accounts Is Calculated
The math is simple. Add up how many months each account on your report has been open, then divide by the total number of accounts. Say you have three: a credit card opened five years ago (60 months), a second card opened two years ago (24 months), and a mortgage opened 15 years ago (180 months). The combined total is 264 months. Divide by three and your average age is 88 months, or roughly seven years and four months.3Experian. How Does Length of Credit History Affect Credit Score
That number moves constantly. Every passing month adds a month to every open account, slowly pushing the average upward. Any new account introduces a zero-month entry that pulls the average back down. This is why people who rarely open new accounts tend to have stronger credit age numbers than people who sign up for every store card at the register.
How Much Credit Age Affects Your Score
Both major scoring models care about credit age, but they weight it differently.
Under the standard FICO model, length of credit history accounts for 15% of your total score. FICO evaluates the age of your oldest account, the age of your newest account, and the average across all accounts. A longer history helps, but FICO has noted it isn’t strictly required for a good score.1myFICO. How Scores Are Calculated The newer FICO 10T model adds trended data, analyzing at least 24 months of history so it can detect whether your credit behavior is improving or deteriorating rather than just looking at a snapshot.4Experian. What You Need to Know About the FICO Score 10
VantageScore 4.0 groups credit age with credit mix into a single “depth of credit” factor worth about 20% of the score. That category evaluates how long your accounts have been open alongside the variety of account types you carry.2VantageScore. The Complete Guide to Your VantageScore 4.0 Credit Score Because age and mix are combined, you can’t isolate the exact weight of age alone under VantageScore the way you can approximate it under FICO.
Before either score exists at all, FICO requires at least one account that has been open for six months or longer, and at least one account reported to a credit bureau within the past six months. A single account can satisfy both.5myFICO. What Are the Minimum Requirements for a FICO Score
Which Accounts Count
Almost every account on your credit report contributes to the average age calculation. Credit cards, retail store cards, and home equity lines of credit are revolving accounts that stay on your report as long as they remain open. Installment accounts like mortgages, auto loans, and student loans also count. Because mortgages and student loans often stretch 15 to 30 years, they can anchor a credit profile with substantial history.6Equifax. Installment vs Revolving Credit – Key Differences
Authorized user accounts count too, and they’re the fastest legitimate way to add credit age. When a card issuer reports the account to the bureaus, the full history, including the original open date, may appear on your report. If a parent adds you to a card they’ve held for 15 years, that 15-year history can dramatically raise your average.3Experian. How Does Length of Credit History Affect Credit Score The catch: if the primary cardholder misses payments or carries high balances, those negatives can land on your report as well.
Whether a business credit card counts toward your personal credit age depends on the issuer. Some report business card activity to the consumer credit bureaus; others only report to commercial bureaus or share negative information like late payments.7Experian. Will Your Business Credit Card Show Up on Your Personal Credit Report Check the issuer’s practices before applying if separation matters to you.
Credit builder loans are small-dollar products, usually between $300 and $1,000, designed for people with thin files. The lender holds the loan amount in a savings account while you make payments and reports those payments to the bureaus. Once you finish paying, you receive the funds.8Federal Reserve. An Overview of Credit-Building Products The account begins aging from day one.
What Shortens or Lengthens Your Credit Age
Opening a New Account
Every new account enters your report at zero months, which drags down the average. If your current average is eight years across four accounts and you open a fifth, your total months get divided by five instead of four, and the zero-month addition pulls the average noticeably lower. The longer your existing history, the smaller the damage from a single new account. For someone with only two or three accounts, one new card can cut the average nearly in half.
Closing an Account
Closed accounts don’t disappear right away. The major credit bureaus keep positive closed accounts on your report for about 10 years after closure, and during that decade the account still contributes its full age to your average.9Experian. Closed Accounts and Your Credit History This is bureau practice rather than a legal requirement: the Fair Credit Reporting Act sets a seven-year limit on most negative items and a ten-year limit for bankruptcies, but doesn’t specify how long positive accounts must remain.10Federal Trade Commission. Fair Credit Reporting Act
FICO and VantageScore may handle closed accounts differently. FICO includes them in its credit history calculations for as long as they appear on your report. VantageScore may exclude some closed accounts from the age calculation, which could lower your average sooner than expected if a lender is using that model.
Closing Your Oldest Card
Closing your oldest credit card is one of the most common ways people accidentally hurt their scores. The age impact is delayed since the account sticks around for about a decade, but two other effects hit immediately. Closing a revolving account eliminates its credit limit, which increases your overall utilization ratio. If that pushes utilization above 30%, the score impact can be significant.11Experian. Does Closing a Credit Card Hurt Your Credit If that card was your only revolving account, you also lose credit mix diversity, which accounts for another 10% of a FICO score.
The age hit arrives years later, when the closed account finally drops off your report. If your oldest card was open for 20 years and your next-oldest is only six years old, that removal dramatically shortens both your oldest account age and your overall average. By that point, most people have forgotten the closure and are blindsided by the drop.
How to Protect and Build Your Credit Age
Credit age is the one scoring factor where the most effective strategy is doing nothing. Keeping old accounts open, even if you rarely use them, preserves your average. If an issuer threatens to close a card for inactivity, a small recurring charge like a streaming subscription with autopay keeps the account alive.
Be selective about new accounts. Every new card or loan resets the clock on your newest account age and dilutes your average. That doesn’t mean never opening anything, but the marginal rewards card probably isn’t worth it if you already have solid coverage. Timing matters too: if you plan to apply for a mortgage within the next year, avoid opening new accounts in the months leading up to it.
For people building from scratch, a credit builder loan or a secured credit card creates a reported account that starts aging immediately.8Federal Reserve. An Overview of Credit-Building Products Becoming an authorized user on a family member’s long-standing account is faster still, because you inherit the account’s full history. A single authorized user account open for a decade can take someone’s average age from zero to 10 years in one reporting cycle.3Experian. How Does Length of Credit History Affect Credit Score After that, the most important thing is patience. Credit age rewards people who leave things alone.