Adding an installment loan -- the Share Secure technique

[Anonymous]

Great AU question, buddy.  You are most likely to get the most people reading it (and therefore the best answer) if you post it in its own separate thread.  Perhaps in the General Credit Topics forum.

You expressed a wish to get all your cards and loans to have a similar report date.  That's quite possible, down the road.  My advice is to allow them all to get into a rhythm of reporting on their own.  It's not unusual for that to take at least a couple months.  (Your cards are all very new.)

Once that has happened (and you really should give them a good three months) contact your various credit card companies and ask them if they could change your "due date" to some fixed date of your choosing.  For example, you might choose the 28th or the 15th or whatever.  You will then discover that your cards are all reporting to the bureaus at around the same time (perhaps 5-10 days after the due date).  Again, you'll need to give them another three months after that for the reporting rhythms to change.

Not all CCS will agree to do this, but many will.  In the case of the Alliant loan, you won't need the "due date" to fall at the same time because the SS Loan Technique will cause the due date to get pushed out to well over 4 years from now.

As you develop specific questions about cards or scores or any of the many things people write about here, don't hesitate to create a seperate post about it.  Like I said before, you are most likely to get the answer you need that way.  Best of luck!

[CreditMagic7]

Very well done and thanks for going to all this trouble to nicely correlate everything that it entails into neatly divided sections.

Never really gave it much thought before to change things up with a SSL, since once my yearly routine unsecured bank loan expired i simply reapplied for another to keep the mix alive n well.

Excellent!

[Absolution16]

UPDATE:

It took exactly 3 business days, as told by Dixie, to have my $510 of the funds as "available."  I went ahead and finished the application process.  $500 shared secured loan for 60 months, rebuilding credit purpose, etc.  At the bottom of the application page, it did state that Alliant will pull credit information, but as I have read from others, only a soft pull is initiated, so I am hoping that no hard pull is done on my credit report.

I submitted my e-mail address as the contact info, so I should probably get an e-mail reply sometime this week?

Question:  Is it a good idea to ask for a payment date at an earliest available date so that I can actually make my first lump-sum payment ASAP?  If I pay off $420, do I get exactly $420 of the funds in my Alliant savings account unfrozen?

[Absolution16]

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@Anonymous wrote:

Great AU question, buddy.  You are most likely to get the most people reading it (and therefore the best answer) if you post it in its own separate thread.  Perhaps in the General Credit Topics forum.

You expressed a wish to get all your cards and loans to have a similar report date.  That's quite possible, down the road.  My advice is to allow them all to get into a rhythm of reporting on their own.  It's not unusual for that to take at least a couple months.  (Your cards are all very new.)

Once that has happened (and you really should give them a good three months) contact your various credit card companies and ask them if they could change your "due date" to some fixed date of your choosing.  For example, you might choose the 28th or the 15th or whatever.  You will then discover that your cards are all reporting to the bureaus at around the same time (perhaps 5-10 days after the due date).  Again, you'll need to give them another three months after that for the reporting rhythms to change.

Not all CCS will agree to do this, but many will.  In the case of the Alliant loan, you won't need the "due date" to fall at the same time because the SS Loan Technique will cause the due date to get pushed out to well over 4 years from now.

As you develop specific questions about cards or scores or any of the many things people write about here, don't hesitate to create a seperate post about it.  Like I said before, you are most likely to get the answer you need that way.  Best of luck!

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Thanks again for your detailed explanation! 

[Anonymous]

For credit mix does my open mortgage act as an open installment? Or is that considered a different account type

[Absolution16]

UPDATE:

Within a matter of hours after I finished my application, I got an e-mail from a loan officer to contact him.  I just got off the phone with him.  The phone call took about 3 minutes.  Very simple.

He asked these questions:

1.  Verify account number/social security number

2.  Shared Secured Loan?  Yes

3.  For $500?  Yes.

4.  For 60 Months?  Yes.  He didn't even blink nor he did say the term was too long.

5   Where would you like the payments to be deducted from?  I chose the Alliant Savings Account.

6.  When would you like your due date?  I picked April 7 for my first due date.

7.  Where would you like your $500 loan funds to be sent to?  I asked to be put into the Alliant Savings Account.

Then he told me to wait for loan docs via e-mail to be signed electronically, and that the loan should be finalized today.

The monthly payment came out to be $9.19, which means the loan is indeed for 60 months.  Great!

Now I just need to wait for the loan docs to arrive via e-mail!

EDIT:  (UPDATE):

E-mail was sent to me to alert me to sign the loan documents via docusign about an hour after I got off the phone with the loan officer.  I just finished signing the document, saved it as a PDF file, and got a confirmation e-mail that the document has been signed.  Now I just need to wait until the loan funds show up in my savings account.

[CreditMagic7]

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@Absolution16 wrote:

UPDATE:

Within a matter of hours after I finished my application, I got an e-mail from a loan officer to contact him.  I just got off the phone with him.  The phone call took about 3 minutes.  Very simple.

He asked these questions:

1.  Verify account number/social security number

2.  Shared Secured Loan?  Yes

3.  For $500?  Yes.

4.  For 60 Months?  Yes.  He didn't even blink nor he did say the term was too long.

5   Where would you like the payments to be deducted from?  I chose the Alliant Savings Account.

6.  When would you like your due date?  I picked April 7 for my first due date.

7.  Where would you like your $500 loan funds to be sent to?  I asked to be put into the Alliant Savings Account.

Then he told me to wait for loan docs via e-mail to be signed electronically, and that the loan should be finalized today.

The monthly payment came out to be $9.19, which means the loan is indeed for 60 months.  Great!

Now I just need to wait for the loan docs to arrive via e-mail!

EDIT:  (UPDATE):

E-mail was sent to me to alert me to sign the loan documents via docusign about an hour after I got off the phone with the loan officer.  I just finished signing the document, saved it as a PDF file, and got a confirmation e-mail that the document has been signed.  Now I just need to wait until the loan funds show up in my savings account.

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Thanks for sharing your own recent experience with this

[Absolution16]

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@CreditMagic7 wrote:

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Thanks for sharing your own recent experience with this

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No problem  I hope this helps someone in the near or distant future.  

UPDATE: So this afternoon, I checked my accounts and saw that my loan had been finalized, showing a $500 balance.  My savings account had a current balance of $1,015.00, of which $510 were shown as available.  I figured that that the $505 that are frozen are probably from my initial $500 deposit and the $5 extra Alliant put into my savings account when I opened it.  The other available $510 should be from the $500 loan and the extra $10 deposit (My initial deposit was $510 into the savings account).

Anyways, so I went to "Transfer Money", and transferred $420 out of my savings account into the loan.  After that, current balance on the loan shows as $80.00.  Savings account now shows $595.00 as current balance, of which still $510.00 are shown as available.  The due date on the loan has been pushed way back to January 7, 2020, with a new scheduled payment amount of $2.74.

So now, I think all the hard part is done.  If I am not mistaken, all I have to do now is to wait until my 1st auto payment goes through on April 7, and then try to delete the auto payment afterwards?

Just out of curiosity, I tried to delete/edit the auto payment, but it wouldn't let me do so... just as Dixie stated.  However, of interesting note is that on the Edit Transfer Screen this type of information shows up now:

From:  Savings Account -S01 - Available:  $510.00

To:  Share Secured Loan - L01 - Available: $0.00  - Due: $2.74

Amount: $9.19

Frequency:  Monthly

First Transfer Date: 01/07/2020

Last Transfer Date: No End Date (Continue until cancelled)

QUESTIONS:  

1.  Since I paid off $420 off the loan balance, is it safe for me to take the $420 out of Alliant Savings Account back to my regular savings account at a different bank?

2.  I noticed that on the loan account details screen, the first transfer date is now showing as Jan 7, 2020.  Does that mean that most likely the first transfer that was initially set up for Apr 7 may not even take place?

[Anonymous]

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@Absolution16 wrote:

   No problem  I hope this helps someone in the near or distant future.  

UPDATE: So this afternoon, I checked my accounts and saw that my loan had been finalized, showing a $500 balance.  My savings account had a current balance of $1,015.00, of which $510 were shown as available.  I figured that that the $505 that are frozen are probably from my initial $500 deposit and the $5 extra Alliant put into my savings account when I opened it.  The other available $510 should be from the $500 loan and the extra $10 deposit (My initial deposit was $510 into the savings account).

Anyways, so I went to "Transfer Money", and transferred $420 out of my savings account into the loan.  After that, current balance on the loan shows as $80.00.  Savings account now shows $595.00 as current balance, of which still $510.00 are shown as available.  The due date on the loan has been pushed way back to January 7, 2020, with a new scheduled payment amount of $2.74.

So now, I think all the hard part is done.  If I am not mistaken, all I have to do now is to wait until my 1st auto payment goes through on April 7, and then try to delete the auto payment afterwards?

I personally tend to cushion all actions with a couple business days.  In other word, wait until the Alliant confirms that the auto-transfer has gone through (you might not see that reflected until April 8) and then wait a business day beyond that,  Then take your action of deleting the transfer. 

Similarly, in your question below, where you ask if you can withdraw your funds, my own style would be to wait until your online banking portal says the funds are available, wait a business day beyond that, and then initiate the transfer of your funds to your external bank.  That's just my own style, since it allows me to be really confident that the next step can be taken without anything weird happening.

You ask if this is the only thing you have yet to do.  There are a few more things to do, but they are listed in the guidance.  For example, once you are confident that your autopay has been deleted, you'll need to bring your balance down to $44.  That will make it < 8.99% which is what you want.

Just out of curiosity, I tried to delete/edit the auto payment, but it wouldn't let me do so... just as Dixie stated.  However, of interesting note is that on the Edit Transfer Screen this type of information shows up now:

From:  Savings Account -S01 - Available:  $510.00

To:  Share Secured Loan - L01 - Available: $0.00  - Due: $2.74

Amount: $9.19

Frequency:  Monthly

First Transfer Date: 01/07/2020

Last Transfer Date: No End Date (Continue until cancelled)

QUESTIONS:  

1.  Since I paid off $420 off the loan balance, is it safe for me to take the $420 out of Alliant Savings Account back to my regular savings account at a different bank?

See my comment above.  Do bear in mind that you are getting a friendly interest rate here at Alliant (basically 1%).  So you can still leave some cushion money in if you feel like it and not worry that it is losing a lot of interest you could get elsewhere.

2.  I noticed that on the loan account details screen, the first transfer date is now showing as Jan 7, 2020.  Does that mean that most likely the first transfer that was initially set up for Apr 7 may not even take place?

The guidance answers this.  It says:

If the autopay has changed so that the next "scheduled transfer" date has been pushed way ahead in time, ignore that.  It is likely that your autopay will still go through on the first date that you agreed to. 

My autopay date did get pushed years ahead and yet the first autopay nonetheless still went through.  A few other people also had the same experience.  But don't hesitate to let us know if you have the same or (even more importantly) a different experience.

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[Anonymous]

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@Anonymous wrote:
For credit mix does my open mortgage act as an open installment? Or is that considered a different account type

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Revelate's experience, as I understand it, is the following:

Just before his new mortgage began reporting, his open installment loan(s) were all non-mortgage and his total installment utilization was very low (under 8%). 

Then his new mortgage appeared on his report.  Exactly at the same time, his score took a significant dive.

The only way he could explain that is if FICO, when calculating his total installment utilization, was counting the mortgage in with all his non-mortgage loans, making no distinction between them.

So from R's perspective, he would say a person with an open mortgage will not benefit from this SS loan technique.  Because his experience is that the mortgage loan will drive the installment utilization calculation.