Not that it matters much but DCU isn't one you can gimmick FICO wise with installment reindeer games; if it's your highest APR sure pay it, but not paying it off is only going to be a 3 month pause on things when we're talking trying to keep tradelines open for as long as possible.
If it's not highest APR pay something else imo 
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@Anonymous wrote:Not much to pay. Interest is really low on all of them.
DCU auto is 1.74%
DCU personal loan is 8.75%
SOFI personal loan is 11%
I think I will pay 5k principle on Sofi and $4500 on principle on DCU personal loan.
What do you mean by my famous words "reindeer games" with DCU? I don't understand.
Basically silly tricks one can play with one's credit report to boost one's FICO.
The Share Secure Loan trick is one such, and I've sort of referred to it as reindeer games for a while and it's sort of stuck with me and a few others heh.
@Anonymous wrote:Not much to pay. Interest is really low on all of them.
DCU auto is 1.74%
DCU personal loan is 8.75%
SOFI personal loan is 11%
I think I will pay 5k principle on Sofi and $4500 on principle on DCU personal loan.
What do you mean by my famous words "reindeer games" with DCU? I don't understand.
"Reindeer games" is a term coined by Revelate who pioneered a method for someone with no installment loans to improve his or her "credit mix" and join in the "reindeer games" from which Rudolph the rednosed reindeer had previously been excluded, without actually getting into serious debt like a mortgage or car loan.
The method, in a nutshell, is:
Join Alliant Credit Union, take out a $500+ savings account, take out a $500 share secured loan secured by the savings account with a 48 or 60 month term, decline or cancel autopay, transfer $455 from the savings account towards the loan balance bringing the balance down to $45. Pay that off slowly over the
balance of the term. Once that reports the positive effects will be felt.
What Revelate is now saying is that DCU doesn't report the payments like Alliant does... different institutions report differently. Some (apparently including DCU) can't be used to play the 'reindeer game' because once you make the $455 prepayment, they simply shorten the term of the loan, thus defeating the whole purpose.
@Anonymous wrote:Hi SouthJ. I think Rev (and now others) use the term indeed for that, but also a bit more broadly to include any kind of silly gimmicky thing (a game) that one can do to improve one's score.
E.g. it is a bit silly that have one becomes instantly much less risky by placing a cup of coffee on one card, if all your cards were at $0, but that's a trick that people like you and the insiders here know. Similarly it's a bit silly that if you have six credit cards that each have a cup of coffee on them, your whole mortgage future could be decided by paying off the coffee on five of the six cards -- but again it's a gimmick that the insiders here know.
All examples of playing silly games with CC and installment loan balances.
At some point (FICO 10 and beyond) much of that silliness (at least touching CCs) will get eliminated I imagine. But it will take years for FICO 10 and Vantage 4 (when they are eventually released) to become so widely adopted that the older stategies are no longer relevant. So I imagine we'll all still be playing RGs for several more years.
Well I'm just glad to be able to join in the games, I've been an outsider so long, what with the red nose and all....
