In a bind, starting car loan search

[Anonymous]

1. Have score FICO of 649

2. Seeking car loan, probably next month by 15th.

3. Before next month rolls around i was trying to do what I could to improve my score, I've buckled down and paid actually almost all of my debt off.

4. Have $3900 in revolving credit lines, and $900 on the line now. Have a car loan with less than a year left, @ $3300 of a $20,000 balance, and a motorcycle loan (60 months, but since Nov 07 have paid extra and have $900-$350 about to be sent by 15th by a party that owes me some money on it for damages) left

Question. To bump my credit up as much as possible.....

do I:

Pay down the credit card to $100-200

Pay off the motorcycle loan as it shows as a installment loan (under auto classification), and affects my available "installment loans"?

Or best option please?

I'm in the middle of a dispute with an old charge off, and if removed have the potential to bump up my score dramatically, but I'm constricted by time so I don't even know if I pay off the motorcycle this month if it will show as paid off next month and greatly increase my ability to COSIGN for my wife of 621 FICO.

Advice?

[Anonymous]

More than likely (although it is possible) itmes you pay after this week will not be fully updated by the 15th.  Even items you paid off recently might not be updated as they can take 30-45 days to update.  You can get letters showing the balances as paid to have ready for the loan officer and it might help.  Paying off the revolving debt will definitely help your score.

[Anonymous]

so that revolving debt would take precendence over the "second car loan" via the $900 of the motorcycle? I'm just trying to verify.

[Anonymous]

It depends upon your goal.  Typically revolving debt gets graded on utilization percentage.  So paying it to under 9% of limit is a good score boost.  But, if you are worried about Debt to Income Ratio, then paying off the loans will proabably be more critical.

[PayingTheBills]

Pay off all of your CC's except for one, and let that one report a small balance.  Definitely get your utilization under 9% overall though, that's a good score bump.  When my CC reported mid-month for no reason and my util went from 8% to 13%, I lost 7 points.  So you should see a decent bump (10-20 points I'd say) for paying down your revolving debts.

Make sure all of your new CC balances report to the CRA's before applying for the loan.

Assuming you have no repo's on your CR, and you have not been late on your auto loans, your "auto-enhanced FICO score" should be a little higher than your standard FICO.  Don't hesitate to askthe financing company if they use standard FICO scores or auto-enhanced scores, and which bureaus they pull. 

Your income will play a big role here as the bank will want to know that you can handle three seperate installment loans.  However, you have paid off a good chunk of each loan, that is a big positive.  Also, when they see your low revolving util, they will see you are not cash-strapped as a result of your current loans, and that you are responsible with your current credit.

Banks can't see your exact FICO score, they only see a range, so you're looking to get to 660 or above (I believe) to reach the next range.

[MsKiwi]

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@PayingTheBills wrote:

Banks can't see your exact FICO score, they only see a range, so you're looking to get to 660 or above (I believe) to reach the next range.

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I believe this is incorrect. Any lender who pulls your fico can see the exact score at the time they pull just like when we pull our scores it is the score on that particular day it is pulled.

[Anonymous]

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@MsKiwi wrote:

I believe this is incorrect. Any lender who pulls your fico can see the exact score at the time they pull just like when we pull our scores it is the score on that particular day it is pulled.

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Correct. Don't forget bank/dealerships pay for that Fico score.

Now for an autoloan, score is much less the determiner then the supplemental information like income/profession/job housing stability/dti.

There is much extenuating/mitigating information that can be called into play