@Anonymous wrote:
Hello!
I wanted to pay down on my credit cards since I've been at about 67% util. (Crazy, I know) So I took out a small personal loan of about 2000 from Springleaf Financial. The interest rate is 24%. I plan on paying this off in about 3 months so is the interest rate going to hurt me in the end? I'm not really educated in interest rates. I just know that I'll pay this off in 3-6 months versus 36 months. I noticed in the loan docs that my credit score is 660 with Experian. On every website you can think of including this website my score ranges from 604 - 627. No where near the 660 Springleaf provided me with. So how do I find out my actual FICO score aside from requesting a paper copy annually? Is this website showing us our correct FICO score?
They may be using an older FICO model (the mortgage scores), which is why its different. There are also different flavors of FICO - Bank enhanced, auto enhanced, insurance, etc. Somtimes its hard to figure out what version they use.
A "paper copy annually" (I'm assuming you mean from annualcreditreport.com) is not going to show your scores, only your raw reports.
Aside from being paid down slightly faster, I see no advantage of the Springleaf loan - interest rate is likely similar to CC rates, so you're not saving any money. Being new it would lower your AAoA, but that will recover over time as it ages. All it really accomplishes is a bit of a score boost for a few months. You would have achieved the same end result by simply applying the payments you're making on the loan to your cards.
IMO, the only time a loan makes sense is if the interest rate is signifigantly lower and/or you have a pressing need to get scores up in a very short time period.
