Lost 23+ points paying off 1/7 Nelnet loans :o

[Anonymous]

Greetings y'all---
Hubby has some student loans with Nelnet.  They are grouped A, D, E an G.   G was the lowest at 750 so we paid it off and when everything updated this week holy cow his scores dropped 23-27 points on each CRA!!!  I was not anticipating one small loan payoff having such an adverse effect.  We'd like to pay off loan D next but can't keep taking score hits for paying off loans.   Sidenote:  Loan A has 1, 2 and 3 and E has 5 and 6- so each individual loan is reporting on all CRA's, not the groups.  
Does this seem correct??  I'd like to know if we can expect another similar score drop paying off loan D as it is the next lowest one with the higher interest rate.  
TIA!!! 

[ccquest]

What was the original loan amount? Maybe it had a much larger effect on the overall installment utilization %. I had a similar drop when I refinanced recently.

If you're not going for anything new, no harm in taking scoring hits. I'd rather lose points shorter term than pay more longer term.

[calyx]

I concur with ccquest - installment loans affect scores by aggregate utilization.  If those student loans were initially very high, then when they closed it could have adversely affected your utilization.

Keep paying off the loans, you'll be fine.   Time will bring your scores back up.

[jasonbourne84]

Another likely explanation was that the $750 loan was his oldest account. 

[calyx]

Unless it was deleted from his credit report, it shouldn't.  Closed (positive) accounts generally stay on your credit report for up to 10 years.

[jasonbourne84]

---

@calyx wrote:

Unless it was deleted from his credit report, it shouldn't.  Closed (positive) accounts generally stay on your credit report for up to 10 years.

---

Oh gosh - I don't know what I was thinking when I responded. 100% correct. Ignore me and listen to @calyx

[RootDet]

But the Average Age Of Opened Accounts would take a dive, and that is a factor