I was living abroad during the credit crisis, and a few of my credit cards were cancelled for non-use during the crunch to tighten credit. As a result, I have one older account and several newer accounts. Are those older closed accounts still contributing to the average age of my accounts, or did the cancellations screw me? Once seven years have passed since their closure (next year), will these old accounts drop off my report? If so, will my average account age change (decrease)?
Also, because of the monkey business above, my oldest account is now my oldest account by FAR. There is a six-year gap between this account (the only one that wasn't cancelled while I was abroad) and my next oldest card. I am only 28, so that's a significant percentage of my credit history, which started when I was 18. Unfortunately, my parents have terrible credit and can't add me to their accounts to artificially lengthen my credit history, like so many others do. This old account has an annual fee, and it's one of those terrible college cards with a usurious interest rate. If the answer to my question above is that the closed accounts are not helping my average account age, is it worth keeping this one account open and just eating that fee, or am I overestimating its value? For whatever it's worth, I probably have about ten open revolving accounts (six closed), three open student loans (ten closed), one car loan (soon to be closed), and one mortgage (opened this year). Does the number of open accounts mean that this old account is helping my score less than I am imagining it might?
How heavily do credit scores weigh average account age as opposed to things like credit mix (which would improve if I closed some credit card accounts, including the usurious one), etc.?