Am I gardening??

[Gmood1]

Between now and then, see if you can grab a secured loan from a credit union. It will keep your scores from dropping so much, when the auto reports as paid off.
I wasn't for sure if you were paying ahead inorder to finish paying the loan sooner.
Since that's not the case. The secured loan is the next best thing.

[psylentj]

Ok.  So, this may sound like a dumb question, but ... when you say a secured account, do you mean like where they give me a credit card that is secured?  Or a personal loan for a given amount? 

[Anonymous]

https://ficoforums.myfico.com/t5/Understanding-FICO-Scoring/Adding-an-installment-loan-the-Share-Sec...

It's a personal loan using money in your savings account as collateral. FICO gives a score boost just for having an open installment loan of any kind. Alliant Credit Union used to be the lender of choice for this but stopped offering the product about a year ago. Navy Federal seems to be the best alternative. The key to what made them great is the ability to pay 91% of loan right away and push the date of next payment years down the road. The FICO score boost is the greatest with a loan balance under 9%.

Opening a shared secured loan elsewhere may have some scoring  benefit but most institutions only let you pay ~3 months ahead before shortening the term of the loan. Which makes the <9% technique relatively short lived.