Student loans part of UTI?

[Anonymous]

Are student loans part of your credit utilization?  I'm assuming they are added in the calculations, but figured I would ask instead of assuming. 

[SCF]

Student loans are installment debt, so they are not part of your revolving utilization (what most folks around here call util).  Your utilization on your installment debt also has a minor impact on your credit score, but is calculated and weighted separately from your credit card utilization.

[MaraBlue]

I wondered about that too. Though I'll defer to SCF as knowing more than I do in this, I was worried when I pulled my Equifax report today. I shows my revolving debt to credit ratio as 14%, but my installment (student loans, which have been on various deferments) debt to credit ratio is 122%. The "total" shows 95% debt to credit ratio.

I'd never heard of "debt to credit", and in both my TransUnion and Experian, though my student loans and amounts are listed, they weren't figured into anything. This is the first time I've seen my Equifax file in years, so maybe their format is just weird.

[Anonymous]

Not in the utilization but I believe I lost about 30 points on a consolidation.  I went from established multiple tradelines to one new student loan consolidation tradeline earlier this year and lost a lot of points.  My belief is that the ratio of starting to current debt made the difference.  The new loan was now 100% whereas the old loans had been paid on for quite a while so the ratio of starting balance to current balance was a lot lower.  It could also have been AAoA change but some of my older lines were still there carrying the average age.  I've been waiting for the points to come back but its been 5 months and I've seen no improvement which leads me to believe it was due to ration.  My revolving util has remained about 1% so the consolidation was the only real major change.  I didn't think it was going to change much if anything.  If I had to do it over I might have consolidated all but one of the previous loans so that the active tradeline AAoA would have remained. 

[MaraBlue]

That's an excellent point on what can happen in a consolidation, though I'm sorry you had to experience it in order to share the tip.

I had wondered if consolidating would be a good thing in my situation, but after doing a lot of reading here, it's better if I just leave them as they are and work on paying them down when I can. I have 2 loans taken out in 2004, and though they've always been listed under my open/active accounts, they never seemed to be included in anything, until just the past few months (around February). The ratio might have reached "the danger zone" then, or maybe because all my other baddies fell off about that time, now the focus is on my one (well technically two) remaining baddie(s)...the darn student loans.

I've read how paying off an installment loan can tank your score, which isn't going to happen for me anyway (I'm pretty sure my student loans will outlive me), but I do need to pay them down so the ratio (the original balance verses the balance today) is more sensible.