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How much does the 'Number of Accounts with Balances' affect your credit score? Currently, I have 16, 10 of which are separate student loans. I was considering consolidating the loans anyway (for lower payment and lower interest on higher balances), but I'm wondering what kind of impact this would have. Any ideas?
I go by by having balances on less than half of all accounts, including cards and loans, of which at least one must be a card. The impact could be significant for cards, likely a smaller positive for loans.
@Loques wrote:How much does the 'Number of Accounts with Balances' affect your credit score? Currently, I have 16, 10 of which are separate student loans. I was considering consolidating the loans anyway (for lower payment and lower interest on higher balances), but I'm wondering what kind of impact this would have. Any ideas?
It has a huge impact. Currently two of the loans have are student loans and even though I pay one payment to the same entity, it counts twice. The FICO estmator has a break off for 4 or less. So I would think as close as you can get to that figure would be for the best. Having your loan count as one loan would help; if you can also get a better interest rate, I don't see a down side.
Thanks for the reply. I don't really have a downside in consolidating, so I think I'll go ahead and apply for it. I was just wondering why my score won't budge even though negatives are falling off. I looked at the reasons given (on myFICO) and interestingly enough, the number of accounts with balances was listed. I wasn't sure how much of an impact that can have, but if I were to consolidate the student loans it would go from 10 to 4!