do you have ONLY a student loan or a mortgage?

[dls80]

* Do you have tools for pulling your reports frequently? If not, Credit Karma would be good for you. It is free and gives you the abillity to pull new updated EQ and TU reports as often as once a week.  Yes I am on CK

* Has the new CC begun appearing on your reports?  Yes

* Is this new CC your first CC? No

* When you say that you do have a student loan but do not have a mortgage, can you confirm that you have no other installment loans of any kind? No personal loans, no auto loans, no finance company accounts? (The latter is where, for example, you buy a bedroom set at Rooms To Go, or a washer dryer at Best Buy, and they offer you a special financing deal, where you don't have to pay anything up front.)  Only one student loan.  However, I did consolidate a decade ago.

* Counting all your student loans together...
How much do you currently owe?  $54,000
What was the total original amount of the loans?  I'm not sure

* How many accounts total do you have on your report? (Closed and open together.) EX & EQ 9/ TU 7

I am so delighted that you might be willing to help us out with this. Look forward to hearing from you soon!  interestingly enough I had been reading up on this technique but knew it wouldnt work for me considering I had a student loan.  I was sort of hoping someone would test it out to see if it helped us SL'ers lol.....guess that someone may be myself or my spouse

[Anonymous]

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@dls80 wrote:

* Do you have tools for pulling your reports frequently? If not, Credit Karma would be good for you. It is free and gives you the abillity to pull new updated EQ and TU reports as often as once a week.  Yes I am on CK

* Has the new CC begun appearing on your reports?  Yes

* Is this new CC your first CC? No

* When you say that you do have a student loan but do not have a mortgage, can you confirm that you have no other installment loans of any kind? No personal loans, no auto loans, no finance company accounts? (The latter is where, for example, you buy a bedroom set at Rooms To Go, or a washer dryer at Best Buy, and they offer you a special financing deal, where you don't have to pay anything up front.)  Only one student loan.  However, I did consolidate a decade ago.

* Counting all your student loans together...
How much do you currently owe?  $54,000
What was the total original amount of the loans?  I'm not sure

* How many accounts total do you have on your report? (Closed and open together.) EX & EQ 9/ TU 7

I am so delighted that you might be willing to help us out with this. Look forward to hearing from you soon!  interestingly enough I had been reading up on this technique but knew it wouldnt work for me considering I had a student loan.  I was sort of hoping someone would test it out to see if it helped us SL'ers lol.....guess that someone may be myself or my spouse

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You are going to be the biggest help to us.  Would you mind working with me off-thread?  I'll let you know what would be involved in preparing your credit profile for a test situation.  We'll want to get your CC balances reporting in a stable fashion, along with a few other things, so that we can eilminate all other confounding factors -- the only possible issue in the score change ideally should be the Alliant SS loan.

Mind if I send you a PM (private message to discuss further?

PS.  A crucial thing we'll need to know is what the original amount of the current open loan was.  It won't be hard to find that out.  It will be printed on your TU and EQ reports (and your EX report if you have that).

[dls80]

I'll take a moment tonight to locate original amount and I'll be looking out for your PM.

[Revelate]

CGID: Do you want me to pay off my Alliant loan for science purposes?

I can do that, I'd planned to keep it open the full 5 years but once my file settles back down after the First Tech card reports, I can probably see. 

Something to note, I did have the installment loan reason code at #3 before I pulled the installment loan trick, then when my aggregate <10% that reason code dropped off completely, and when my mortgage reported, reason code back at #3.  TU FICO 8 and all three FICO 8 scores behave similarly for installment utilization so I have no reason to think this isn't referencable for all 3.

I'm deeply skeptical of the same reason code being used for different installment loan types if they aren't rated effectively the same.

[Anonymous]

Thanks so much for the offer, R!

The thing with your profile, however, is that you have an open mortgage.  The fellow I am chatting with right now (dls80) has only open student loans.  There have been enough reports of strange stuff with SLs that it sounds like there is a real chance that someone with only student loans (no mortgage, no auto loan, no personal loan, etc.) may benefit from the SS loan trick. 

I also feel like the scenario of a person with only student loans is of great practical significance, because I think it affects a TON of people, namely people who are in the age range of 19-25.  It's very common for them to have student loans and nothing else.  Actually, here are the things I am most interested in looking at:

Scenario 1: Person has student loans only and they are all in deferment.

     * Test: Does this person benefit from the SS loan trick?

Scenario 2: Person has student loans only and they are NOT deferment (with a history of making payments for at least a few months).

     * Test: Does this person benefit from the SS loan trick?

I can imagine the answer being Yes to 1 and No to 2 -- or perhaps the answer will be yes to both.

Anyway, just getting an answer to this SL question strikes me as being of great practical import, whereas the question of whether a person with only a mortgage (no SLs, no personal loan, no auto loan) could benefit from the SS loan trick is theoretically interesting, but is of lesser importance.  There's just a lot fewer people who only have a mortgage but have a strong need to boost their scores.  (College kids, by contrast, have a huge need for higher scores, since by definition they do not yet have a car or a home yet -- or likely even a few high-quality cards.)

I realize I started out the thread by expressing an interest in both, but I am moving a bit more toward just the SS loan question.

Still, maybe you and I could circle back in several months if you still feel like paying your loan off -- I just hate to see you close out a nice loan when you don't have to.

Thanks again so much for the kind offer.