Hi everyone,
My scores has been looking good so far and Experian is the only credit beareu that's not in the 700s. It was almost there, until Affirm showed up on my account, which caused a dip to my score losing 11 points. They're also reporting a full balance $360, while the loan was over $400. But it shouldn't be a full balance, because I made a payment to them. Is there a way for me to get those 11 points back? I was thinking about just paying them off in full next month.
Thanks!
No need to worry! You're just seeing the immediate result of opening a new account. Perfectly normal.
There's no reason to pay it in full unless you want to. And the reason it's reporting an old balance is because it hasn't hit its next reporting date yet--when it does, it'll be updated.
My advice? Just sit tight and watch your score go back up. 
@tnhomestead wrote:Sounds like you got hit with new account penalty, if so it will go away over time. As far as what they report, is the balance correct?
Yea, the initial balance they're reporting now is lower than the oringal balance, before it got reported. So it looks like the first payment has not been accounted for.
@SoCalGardener wrote:No need to worry! You're just seeing the immediate result of opening a new account. Perfectly normal.
There's no reason to pay it in full unless you want to. And the reason it's reporting an old balance is because it hasn't hit its next reporting date yet--when it does, it'll be updated.
My advice? Just sit tight and watch your score go back up.
Cool. I can wait a little longer, then. Thanks for the advice.
@DarkKnight_Credit wrote:Hi everyone,
My scores has been looking good so far and Experian is the only credit beareu that's not in the 700s. It was almost there, until Affirm showed up on my account, which caused a dip to my score losing 11 points. They're also reporting a full balance $360, while the loan was over $400. But it shouldn't be a full balance, because I made a payment to them. Is there a way for me to get those 11 points back? I was thinking about just paying them off in full next month.
Thanks!
If it's your only open loan, paying it down to 9% of the original loan amount will probably get you a scoring bonus in FICO 8's and 9's.
@SouthJamaica wrote:
@DarkKnight_Credit wrote:Hi everyone,
My scores has been looking good so far and Experian is the only credit beareu that's not in the 700s. It was almost there, until Affirm showed up on my account, which caused a dip to my score losing 11 points. They're also reporting a full balance $360, while the loan was over $400. But it shouldn't be a full balance, because I made a payment to them. Is there a way for me to get those 11 points back? I was thinking about just paying them off in full next month.
Thanks!
If it's your only open loan, paying it down to 9% of the original loan amount will probably get you a scoring bonus in FICO 8's and 9's.
It's not my only open loan. I also have a car loan. I was thinking about paying my car loan's principle in half next week. And see what happens there.
@DarkKnight_Credit wrote:
@SouthJamaica wrote:
@DarkKnight_Credit wrote:Hi everyone,
My scores has been looking good so far and Experian is the only credit beareu that's not in the 700s. It was almost there, until Affirm showed up on my account, which caused a dip to my score losing 11 points. They're also reporting a full balance $360, while the loan was over $400. But it shouldn't be a full balance, because I made a payment to them. Is there a way for me to get those 11 points back? I was thinking about just paying them off in full next month.
Thanks!
If it's your only open loan, paying it down to 9% of the original loan amount will probably get you a scoring bonus in FICO 8's and 9's.
It's not my only open loan. I also have a car loan. I was thinking about paying my car loan's principle in half next week. And see what happens there.
Nothing will happen there, because the car loan is the 800 lb gorilla driving your aggregate installment loan utilization percentage, and you're not going to reach a significant milestone until you're at 9% or less.
Yes to your original question: you should pay off and get rid of that Affirm loan. And in the future don't damage your profile with small junky loans. I made the mistake of picking up a bunch of those when Covid hit. But in retrospect, they were all worthless, didn't help me at all, and caused significant damage to my FICO scores.
@SouthJamaica wrote:Nothing will happen there, because the car loan is the 800 lb gorilla.
Yes to your original question: you should pay off and get rid of that Affirm loan. And in the future don't damage your profile with small junky loans. I made the mistake of picking up a bunch of those when Covid hit. But in retrospect, they were all worthless to me, didn't help me at all, and caused significant damage to my FICO scores.
Hmm, I remember when I refinanced my car loan, which had a 25% interest rate originally, Capital One paid off that loan and increased to around 10+ points. But of course the score dipped nearly 20 points after the new loan shown up on the report. But it could be a different case here.
Regarding the Affirm loan, at some point, the scores should increase in some time though, right? Next time I won't go with those kind of loans, especially if I don't really need it. I thought it would look good on my credit profile, so that's the only reason why I used it.
@DarkKnight_Credit wrote:
@SouthJamaica wrote:Nothing will happen there, because the car loan is the 800 lb gorilla.
Yes to your original question: you should pay off and get rid of that Affirm loan. And in the future don't damage your profile with small junky loans. I made the mistake of picking up a bunch of those when Covid hit. But in retrospect, they were all worthless to me, didn't help me at all, and caused significant damage to my FICO scores.
Hmm, I remember when I refinanced my car loan, which had a 25% interest rate originally, Capital One paid off that loan and increased to around 10+ points. But of course the score dipped nearly 20 points after the new loan shown up on the report. But it could be a different case here.
Regarding the Affirm loan, at some point, the scores should increase in some time though, right? Next time I won't go with those kind of loans, especially if I don't really need it. I thought it would look good on my credit profile, so that's the only reason why I used it.
Yeah, you'll rebound. It's not a huge deal. We live and learn.