@ficonightmare wrote:
So unless you're ready to buy a home, and the extra points would really help lower your rate, i think it's kinda pointless to do. Also, ultimately, you really can't say for certain what taking a loan, regardless how small would do for your score. Depending on what else FICO is reading in your file, it may hurt it.
I think you got it backward. If you're buying a home soon, getting a new loan or any kind of credit account is a bad idea. You want your home purchase to be at least a year, ideally 2 years, from the last time you open a new credit account. If your score is already 760+, I agree that adding a new installment loan if you don't already have one will not help. But if your score is more in the 720's range, and you are shooting for 760 in a year or two, getting a loan for these last points to push you into the terrority is not a bad idea.
@HiLine wrote:
@ficonightmare wrote:
So unless you're ready to buy a home, and the extra points would really help lower your rate, i think it's kinda pointless to do. Also, ultimately, you really can't say for certain what taking a loan, regardless how small would do for your score. Depending on what else FICO is reading in your file, it may hurt it.
I think you got it backward. If you're buying a home soon, getting a new loan or any kind of credit account is a bad idea. You want your home purchase to be at least a year, ideally 2 years, from the last time you open a new credit account. If your score is already 760+, I agree that adding a new installment loan if you don't already have one will not help. But if your score is more in the 720's range, and you are shooting for 760 in a year or two, getting a loan for these last points to push you into the terrority is not a bad idea.
No, I got it. Perhaps I should of been more clear. If you're getting ready to buy a home soon, in the next year or so (NOT in the next week or month. better?) I don't think paying interest, even on a small loan is a good idea.
In fact, none of us know what his score is gonna be in a year or two. it could shoot up to 760 easily with on time payments and low utility.
So to be totally honest, giving someone advice to take out a loan, no matter how small, just for a fico boost, when no one even knows what this person's score will be when they're ready to buy, sounds crazy to me.
And I bet bet my husbands favorite beer , that no financial advisor will tell you it's a good idea.
Mod edit- mild profanity
Starting Score: 600s
@ficonightmare wrote:
@HiLine wrote:
@ficonightmare wrote:
So unless you're ready to buy a home, and the extra points would really help lower your rate, i think it's kinda pointless to do. Also, ultimately, you really can't say for certain what taking a loan, regardless how small would do for your score. Depending on what else FICO is reading in your file, it may hurt it.
I think you got it backward. If you're buying a home soon, getting a new loan or any kind of credit account is a bad idea. You want your home purchase to be at least a year, ideally 2 years, from the last time you open a new credit account. If your score is already 760+, I agree that adding a new installment loan if you don't already have one will not help. But if your score is more in the 720's range, and you are shooting for 760 in a year or two, getting a loan for these last points to push you into the terrority is not a bad idea.
No, I got it. Perhaps I should of been more clear. If you're getting ready to buy a home soon, in the next year or so (NOT in the next week or month. better?) I don't think paying interest, even on a small loan is a good idea.
In fact, none of us know what his score is gonna be in a year or two. it could shoot up to 760 easily with on time payments and low utility.
So to be totally honest, giving someone advice to take out a loan, no matter how small, just for a fico boost, when no one even knows what this person's score will be when they're ready to buy, sounds crazy to me.
And I bet bet my husbands favorite beer that no financial advisor will tell you it's a good idea.
Sounds crazy to you, I understand. I wouldn't bet your husband's favorite beer unless you really hate it, because there may be a financial advisor out there that is a frequent poster on this forum and has performed an appropriate cost/benefit analysis on the idea of taking an installment loan to improve FICO scores. Though I do agree most financial advisors will not recommend that their clients follow that path. Most of them are not as well-versed in credit profile as some of us here, and "us" probably includes you.
I am willing to pay $100 in interests to potentially save myself $30 per month in house payments on a 500k house. In fact, I've paid more than that to myFICO, and spent the number of hours worth many, many times over, to learn how to maximize my FICO scores for my auto loan and my future house. Is a small boost in FICO scores definitely going to give me more favorable rates? No. But even if there is a small chance, I'm willing to invest $100 for that chance to save myself 100 times the amount down the road.
Update: Just got my alliant "shared secured" loan approved and it is in my savings account
See you in 2019 lmao
So that was an odd experience, I was able to do everything on the phone and online (even signed the loan agreement on docusign.com on my mobile phone), so that part was great
the weird part was that the guy on the phone initially called me saying it was weird to ask for $500 secured loan for 5 years and that they wouldn't give it to me and that I would get a followup call on the decision in a day
So two days later (today) I called them back because I never got the followup call, and the guy was like "oh hey" and just sent me the loan terms and legal contract to my email, I signed it in docusign and the loan is in my account, and auto pay is already set up, he did it
so whats next? a second installment loan?
this was great because I was able to do this all in one week, any somehow my bank was able to do free electronic transfers in one day to fund alliant's savings account. saved a lot of time for a process like this
Hah nice! I think I talked to one person (they called me asking what the loan was for... um, purely for FICO scoring purposes) and the process was painless as well, though they didn't blink at the 5 year bit in my case.
If I were you, I'd wait to see what occurred first with my score before adding another. All in the name of FICO science 
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@gen-specific wrote:maybe because I opened the account sunday, had the account funded by tuesday and immediately asked for a loan that was greater than the size of the account (after interest)
I can't tell if there was a hard pull or an inquiry of any kind involved though, doesn't matter
There wasn't for me, SP only both for membership and for the secured loan. Actually looking at the report it appears they used the same pull for both.
For me all of that is correct except for two things:
1) It hasn't reported to EX *yet*, but it only just reported 3 days ago on SW and EX has been really slow for me on Credit Sesame lately, to the tune of a week or more behind CK even (which has been surprising quick the past two months, I can't pretend to understand this reversal in service quality between the two) but their other tradlines report there so I have no worries on that count I simply can't personally confirm it yet.
2) It does report as secured: which makes absolutely zero difference to FICO, and zero difference to me as a result. Likely zero difference to underwriters anyway, mortgages and auto loans are both secured loans, and payment history is payment history.
I would note there wasn't a HP for me, that might not be everyone's case as there isn't a lot of recent anecdotal data that I've seen but I did find a few confirmations in other myFICO threads from other users on the subject.