That's a good question. I'm not sure what is the right answer to your question. I'll do some Googling and get back to you if I got an useful answer. You should email the people at Discover Card as they probably could give you help..

..or if you're like me you could open an additional Amex account. If I do that I get a new account with 22 years of age. The only problem is I have no use for Amex nor do I like the way they do business. I'll just keep it in my back pocket in case I have an issue with account age in the future...

Bob could you explain your numbers a littler more clearly please?..

That's some nice tinkering with Excel. I did the same a while back, and figured out I need about 60 years worth of age added to my AAOA to get back to 6 years avg age (if only adding two accounts)..

I know how to achieve that rather quickly, but I'm still not sure it's worth it...

I'll post some screenshots of myFICO Equifax Score Power Reports..

Basically, when my Average of Accounts was 5 years, each new account would ding my FICO by 50 points..

Now that my Average of Accounts is 6 years, new accounts don't pull my score down very much at all..

It seems that keeping AAoA over 6 years is key for me to be able to add new accounts without bringing down my score..

The first set of numbers consider how many days after AAoA turns 6 years before I can add an account and still have AAoA >= 6 years..

The larger the number of existing accounts, the sooner I can "safely" add another account after AAoA turns 6..

With 108 accounts turning 6 years of age, I only have to wait 20 days..

The 2nd set of numbers considers AAoA turning 7 years..

I wanted to see how many new accounts I could add, and still keep AAoA >=6 years..

With 108 accounts turning 7 years of age, I can add 18 new accounts...

Yes, craigg, this does not contemplate back-dating..

I don't think AmEx is going to let me add many more new accounts...

You might have moved into another bucket, and that's why there was a hit...

I have only my own example to go by, but I suspect that other people who have AAoA >=6 don't have much of a FICO hit either, if adding a new account doesn't drop their AAoA below 6 years..

I MIGHT have discovered this earlier if I hadn't been adding so many new accounts every year...

And it you hadn't been adding so many accounts, you wouldn't be motivated to do this.....

I noticed crossing >6 years helped my score. I think it was worth about +20 points to me. Hard to separate it out but I definitely got a benefit to my scores having an average age >6. Are there other AAoA that have a significant impact? 8 years? 10 years? Anything more than 10 years worth anything?..

Did I post these screenshots already?.

Can't remember, but they were on Photobucket already..

This was from August, 2008, when my Equifax FICO cratered at 757..

I may have to take the pledge...

I think the most significant cutoff is probably at 6 years, since that is specifically mentioned in the "Understanding your FICO score section.".

We should have enough members with AAoA > 8, 10, 12, etc. to do a somewhat scientific study..

Any volunteers?.

I would have paid Lust to document what happened to her scores when she got naughty again...

I fully planned on adding that 60 years worth of age as my next big credit move this year and then documenting the impact on FICO, but got all weak and grabbed the Ameriprise World Elite MC last month. That harpooned my FICO score and created another variable negatively affecting it for the next 6 months. I'm still mulling it over, though...

Anyone know if there is a common limit on how many amex cards a person can have? Or is it case by case? I think I remember some posters claiming to have 9 or 10. Do they still play like that?..

9 or 10 is a lot..

I have 4 personal and 2 business..

Maybe I'll go for Zync and push the envelope...

You could always just close one and add Zync...