Credit glossary
Average age of accounts
The combined age of your credit accounts divided by how many you have, one way scores judge how established your history is.
myFICO lists three age measures inside the length of credit history category: the age of your oldest account, the age of your newest account, and the average age of all of them. That category makes up about 15% of a FICO Score for the general population. FICO keeps counting closed accounts while they remain on your report, and a card closed in good standing usually stays about 10 years.
The average is the age measure you control most directly, mostly through restraint. Every new account enters at zero months and pulls the average down at once, which is why a burst of applications costs more on a young file. Experian says a product change, which keeps the existing account, avoids adding that new zero-age account.
Example
Say you have cards that are 6, 4 and 2 years old. The average is (6 + 4 + 2) ÷ 3 = 4 years. Open a new card and it becomes (6 + 4 + 2 + 0) ÷ 4 = 3 years.
Guides that go deeper
- How many credit cards should you have? The math behind the numberFICO publishes no ideal number of credit cards. What matters is what each card does to utilization, account age and recent applications. The math, worked out.
- Credit mix: how much it counts and when to leave it aloneCredit mix is 10% of a FICO Score, and FICO says you don't need one of each account type. The math on taking a loan just to improve mix rarely works.
- What closing a credit card actually does to your scoreClosing a card cuts your available credit right away but doesn't erase its history for years. See the utilization math and when closing is still the right call.
Sources
- Length of Credit History, myFICO
- What's in my FICO Scores?, myFICO
- Closed Accounts and Your Credit History, Experian
- How to Switch Credit Cards, Experian
This is education, not legal or financial advice. Spot an error? Tell us and we'll fix it.