 TITLE: How Does Length of Credit History Affect Your Credit? CONTENT: What Happens When You Close an Account?\n---------------------------------------\nClosing a credit account or paying off a loan can impact your credit scores in several ways. However, people commonly misunderstand how and when a closed account will impact age-related scoring factors. This may be because it depends on the type of credit score and the scoring model analyzing the information.\nMost consumer credit scores are produced by two credit scoring companies: FICO® and VantageScore®. For FICO® Scores☉ (the scores used by most lenders), the age-related metrics are based on both the open and closed credit accounts that appear on your credit reports. As a result, paying off a loan or closing a credit card won't immediately impact your length of credit history. It could still impact your FICO® Scores in other ways, however (more on that below).\nVantageScore, on the other hand, might not include some closed accounts in its credit age calculations, depending on your credit profile and the type of account that was closed. As a result, closing the account could lower your average age of all accounts, and may hurt your VantageScore credit scores.\nWith scores from both FICO® and VantageScore, the payment history that's part of closed accounts can continue to impact your credit scores as long as the accounts appear in your credit report. For example, if you made on-time payments before the account was closed, that could help your credit. If you missed payments, however, those negative marks could continue hurting your credit until the closed account falls off your credit report.\nClosed accounts can stay on your credit reports for up to 10 years if you never missed a payment. If you missed a payment and then brought the account current before it was closed, the late payment will be removed after seven years, but the account can still stay for 10. However, if your account was delinquent when it was closed, the entire account will be removed seven years after the account's original delinquency date. END