I understand that age of credit is a big part of whether or not you have a good credit score, however for the life of me I can’t figure out how it’s calculated. When I look at the age of my credit it says 23 years. But here’s the thing: I’m only 30, which means that theoretically my credit started when I was 7 years old (spoiler alert: I definitely didn’t have a credit card back then, not to mention any type of loan!).
Can someone please explain how this gets calculated??
Hey, Stephanie! Your credit age determines 15% of your FICO score and is calculated by averaging how long all your accounts have been open. So if you’ve had a credit card for 5 years, a student loan for 4 years and a car loan for 3 years, your credit age would be 4 years.
So yes, it’s definitely odd that you’d have an average credit age of 23 years at 30 years old!
One possible explanation: If a parent or grandparent added you as an authorized user on an account with a long history when you were younger to help you build credit, the date they opened the account would appear on your report. So theoretically, you could have a credit age that’s older than you are.
But another thing to keep in mind is that about 1 in 5 credit reports have errors, so you should look over your reports from each of the three bureaus just to make nothing else looks fishy. You can get one free credit report from each bureau every 12 months at annualcreditreport.com.
Just know that longer = better when it comes to credit age, so as long as nothing else is amiss on your reports, this is working in your favor!
Could be an error on your report, but if it is, it is definitely not a bad one!
