NFCU
NFCU offers personal unsecured loans you can take out where you can cherry pick the exact length of the loan if the dollar amount is high enough. And you can open that account even if you have another loan already open, like my Shared Pledge Loan for the SSL Technique. In fact, you could open two Shared Pledge Loans at the same time, that's up to you.
To get a 24 month or more unsecured loan you need to do $2,001 or more. That may all change in two years when I work towards doing that, but for now they'd have an ideal loan for what I want to do. You could also pay it down to 8.9% immediately and know that would work still and keep the original length of the loan.
So take out a $2,001 secured/unsecured loan, ask for 26 months, pay down to 8.9% right away and look another direction while it ages with an already calculated plan to sit in the garden.
I think NFCU would be great for someone else, but it’s a last resort for me as I already have a NFCU secured CC and a Shared Pledge Loan. If nothing else is working, then this would be the way to go. But I think a secured or unsecured loan with someone else, so I can establish diversity in lenders and build rapport too with another lender is better. But it’s there if need be.
Alliant Credit Union
Alliant only offers DCLs ("debt consolidation loans") and the length of the loans are set and traditional, you can only do 12, 24, 36, 60 months etc. However, you could run up a CC with a few bills then apply for that debt consolidation loan for that CC. I asked. Not every CSR is familiar with how the loans work, so he may have been mistaken, but he seemed confident and knowledgeable and quick with his replies. He got the gist of what I was asking for and why I asked.
You need a 670 to be approved. He didn't say which bureau they pull, but I'm positive there's plenty of data on it around here. I'm confident there's more required too, like DTI or current utilization etc. I like knowing that about the score though, you can't always find that out. Lot of lenders keep data like that secret.
So run up $200 on a CC with traditional bills, but instead of PIF like I always do, I could apply for a DCL. Farming debt to build credit is not smart IMO, so I’d only do a DCL on something I’d traditionally acquire anyways. With the catch being I do a DCL on what would happen naturally and keep it as small as possible to avoid throwing money away on interest. Ask for a 60 month term on it, because I was led to believe that you could open even the smallest loans for 5 years, just as long as it was a DCL. That’s all they offer. If I find out that’s not the case with small loans then things may change because paying interest on a loan intended to strengthen credit is dumb.
The month before I apply for any line of credit, pay it down to less than 8.9%. I suspect that I could actually pay it down immediately to 8.9% and it'd still behave possibly like it did in 2018, keeping the original length of the loan. If not though, I at least didn’t burn myself. If it does behave the same, I’d still have that loan open for another 3 years. Which would be great.
PenFed
PenFed has something that kind of works too but there’s caveats.
PenFed does hard pulls to even get in, but if you’ve already opened your prime line of credit you worked towards like I talked about up there in earlier posts and don’t intend to do anything but open loans to help age at the same time with that prime line of credit, it doesn’t matter. However, you can use that very same HP you used to get in to also apply for an unsecured loan. So at that point it doesn’t hurt to try for that first at all.
You can pick odd numbered months for the length of the loan again. 27, 38, 43 months etc. Whatever funds you use to open the secured loan, they need to have been in the account for 30 days.
Secured Loans can be opened for as low as $250. The catch is, on Secured Loans the minimum payment has to be $25 a month or they advance the loan and you end up paying it off early.
Unsecured Loans have to be a minimum of $500 or more and the minimum payment needs to be $50, or again they advance the payments on the loan and you end up paying it off early.
So open a $700 secured loan for 28 months. On the 24th month when the account has aged to two years, you could make the 25th payment large enough to take the loan down to $55 dollars or something and it’d be at less than 8.9% on your next update, so it wouldn’t be dragging your score down and you could then make your move on an application. The loan would have 1 or 2 payments left then it’d be PIF and closed, just like you wanted.
A PenFed unsecured loan would need to be $1,400, but again on the 25th month you could knock that down too. 1 or 2 payments later that’d also be closed and PIF.
Random Thoughts:
If I go for an unsecured loan of a fair amount, it'd have to be with NFCU because then I could pay it down to 8.9% immediately. Or with Alliant because it could be so small, the interest accrued would be minimal.
PenFed's unsecured loan is not designed well for what I want, which is to pad a thin file without paying a lot of interest. The secured loan is definitely worthwhile and considering though.
Some are okay with CCs to pad a thin file instead of loans and it works for them, but I prefer to only open a CC that I intend to use. 3 or 4 cards is enough. When I open one, I want to close another.
I don't use the SSL technique. I'm sure somebody will chime in who can provide more clarity.