Percentage paid and due

[Swatch]

I read that having more than 90% of the loan principal amount still owed is bad for credit score. What other thresholds make a difference with credit score? 85% 80%? 75%? Or would I maybe not see any extra points on my credit score for these thresholds? Just trying to decide if I should pay it down another 5 or 10%.

For a refinance, is there a certain threshold that banks really want to see? Or are they more concerned with how many months you paid on time? I am trying to decide if I should apply before it's been 12 months. If I made 12 payments but some were early and it's only been 10-11 months...

[ccquest]

90%, 65%, 9.5% based on the Primer. Those are all aggregate I believe, don't know if there's anything for individual. Based on that, I don't think there'd be much difference for you - plus plenty of people refi their auto loan after the first payment is done when they buy a new car.

I can attest to the 90% because when I refinanced my student loans, I dropped 20 points when the accounts updated and I think the majority was due to being back above 90% aggregate utilization.

I don't think they really care about the threshold that much. They care about loan to value ratio and overall credit history, not a specific loan on it.

[Swatch]

Thanks for those details, and that's all good news!

I guess I have to calculate the aggregate utilization myself since Experian seems to not count the auto loan in their calculation.

[ccquest]

I made a spreadsheet that's linked somewhere in the Primer too, it calculates ages and utilization if you fill everything out.

You can use that to simulate account ages out into the future too, just mentioning that based on our talks on student loans before because I forgot about it then!