My curent installment loan will be paid off in a few months and I'm debating my next step. Here are the 2 scenarios that I'm debating. The amounts I'm using may change, I used these for easy math 
Scenario 1 - One 4K installment loan with 4 year life.
Scenario 2 - 1K installment loan for 12 months, when that one pays off, 2nd 1k installment loan for 12 months, after that is paid, 3rd 1k intallment load for 12 months etc.
Which would benefit my FICO score best? I currently have an active mortgage, an active secured loan (PIF end of summer) 3 open bank revolving cards and 2 open store cards. Also, i have 1 closed installment loan and 1 closed credit card.
Longer is better, and size in this case is probably irrevelant: you just want the open installment line reporting.
Personally I stuffed $500 in an Alliant account and took a 5 year loan against it. Did similar with USAA recently on their minimum of $2500, wish I'd known beforehand they have a 5 year max term, I was going for 7 . I think the Alliant one is better personally, no HP's anywhere, lower dollar amount. The interest rate is slightly higher with Alliant at 5 years (3% Alliant vs. 2% USAA, identical at 4 years but under the longer is better principle...) but when we're talking $500 *yawn*.
If I had to do it over again (which I might in 5 years, depends if I have a mortgage by that time or not) I'd probably go $500 with Alliant and $500 with SDFCU.
@cgussio wrote:I don't know how Rev's loans report but the one that I have through Citi does report as a loan type of Secured and Account type of Installment. Hope that helps,
USAA reports as secured; I don't know about Alliants and SFDCU may not as I'm not certain their secured credit card does?
Secured doesn't really matter: we're doing this explicitly for our FICO score and the secured tag is absolutely irrelevant to that: I don't think any underwriter is going to make a fuss over it either, they may shrug looking at the dollar amounts involved but that's the least of my personal concerns with underwriting of any product... and no one has said boo regarding the USAA loan I currently have on my report.
Come to think of it, probably means nothing at all as the big ticket installment tradelines (mortgage, and auto) are both secured and everyone knows it. Wouldn't worry about it at all from that standpoint.