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My balance is now $80 my first payment due date is 01/05/20 originally 06/05/16 Now all I have to do now is wait for June 5th 2016 to see if the autopay goes through.
Good luck, Artist.
It's worth pointing out that for anyone who has a time constraint -- they want everything squared away as fast as possible -- then they should really consider choosing their date of the first autopay to be ASAP. That way they don't have to wait a long time before the first payment, then the autopay deletion, etc.
My Loan Officer was happy to give me any date i wanted. I chose a date about ten days from then.
@Anonymous wrote:Good luck, Artist.
It's worth pointing out that for anyone who has a time constraint -- they want everything squared away as fast as possible -- then they should really consider choosing their date of the first autopay to be ASAP. That way they don't have to wait a long time before the first payment, then the autopay deletion, etc.
My Loan Officer was happy to give me any date i wanted. I chose a date about ten days from then.
I was not able to choose a date ten days away. I was told 30 days. I tried to change it of course it says cannot be changed but when I selected delete It asked if I am sure I did not click delete transfer I wanted to ask first if I should then pick a closer date. (I know in the how to it says do not try to delete but it says you can't do that yet just wondering if you "can't do that yet as in it won't allow you or if it is too early to delete)
So after everything is taken care of in progress has anyone transferred over say a .99 cent or like amount to their Alliant SSL yet or just wait some months or whatever?
Do we have the no activity numbers down yet as to months etc.?
I have made ultrasmall payments with no problem to my SS loan from my external (i.e. non-Alliant) checking account. I just used my checking account's billpay feature. I have two small quarterly billpays set up: one pushes a little money into my Alliant savings account, the other as a payment to my loan.
You could probably just give Alliant a call to ask them exactly when their dormancy and inactivity fees kick in. I am 99.99% sure that they wouldn't kick in unless a year had gone by with no activity. But it's possible that if you set up an annual billpay then the dormancy fee might kick in a few days before your payment was made. Most billpay utilities let you do one every six months or every three. So in practice the question of precisely when the inactivity fee kicks in becomes moot. Just set up a BP every six months (or 3) and be done with it -- that's my view anyway.
Hi Incubus24,
I don't think there is any cause for concern yet. Your Credit Karma report shows that Alliant reported to the credit bureau on April 30, 2016 and the pay down occurred not as a regularly scheduled payment but as a special one-time payment. So my guess is that notation about no payments refers only to the payment of regularly scheduled payments. So once the regular monthly payments start accumulating, my guess is the notation on the credit report will change to something more positive. I got an Alliant account about the same time you did. I opened the savings account on April 16, the loan on April 22, and paid it down that same day. I just got my TU report from Credit Karma and it reports the loan and the pay down, just as yours does, with the same notation about no payments.
At least for the two of us, it looks like Alliant is doing the credit reporting at the end of the month, and doing so very quickly after the loan is opened. I like the suggestion Credit Guy In Dixie made earlier today to set up an automatic payment of $1.00 per month. My next payment isn't due for years, what if I forget about it? Setting up a tiny scheduled payment wards off the possibility of forgetting about the loan and ending up with negative credit reporting. I have to do the math though, I don't want to pay it off too quickly. I know the Guidance points out that Alliant's computer system is reluctant to allow the re-initiation of a scheduled loan payment directly from the Alliant savings account, once you have cancelled a scheduled monthly payment, as I have now done. But the people I have spoken to at Alliant seem very helpful, so I am going to wait until next month when I confirm that the cancelled scheduled payment is truly cancelled, and call them to see if they can set up a monthly auto pay from the Alliant savings account for $1.00 or if they won't, then just schedule the payment to be deducted from an outside bank account.
The Alliant loan is reported on the Credit Karma TU report as a "secured loan" not as an "installment loan." I wonder if this is a new loan classification. That is, if the FICO scoring model will consider this "secured loan" as an installment loan for the purpose of improving the FICO score through the diversification of types of credit. Anyone know?
well this was really bugging me so i thought maybe there's a way for me to get a 'free' CR besides the annual (which i already pulled earlier this year. EX). and i've learned recently that you can pull CR for free when you get denied or was not approved with the best terms. i pulled one when i app for BBR last march and by using its report# i was able to pull another one just now with recent updates on it!! yey! this was the first time i've done this and it's kinda neat. i'm not sure how long i can keep doing this though (using the report# to pull a free and recent CR). is this also possible with TU and/or EQ? got a free TU one also!!! yey! (see below EX). got it through my TU login when i requested a BoA HP CLI last march. i haven't dabbled with EQ yet. not even the free annual.
anyway, here's the report from EX about this SSL. notice the type as secured loan and the green OK in account history.
.btw i share the same sentiment as yapsalot:"The Alliant loan is reported on the Credit Karma TU report as a "secured loan" not as an "installment loan." I wonder if this is a new loan classification. That is, if the FICO scoring model will consider this "secured loan" as an installment loan for the purpose of improving the FICO score through the diversification of types of credit. Anyone know?" as per TU, it's showing as an installment account. i guess nothing to worry about.
also, ive never had any other loans before so i was wondering how does car, mortgage, other loans shows up on the report? does it show as "Auto Loan" for car? sorry, im real newb. :/
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TU report 5/7/16
Hi Incubus and Yapsalot. :-)
An Auto loan will show up as type Auto, A mortgage loan will show up as type Mortgage. A student loan will show up as type Student Loan.
The key thing to realize is that these are just sub-classifications of the more general class of Installment Loan. Here is a way to think of it that may help you.
Kroger (the grocery store) sells many different types of things, from drugs to bleach to potato chips to milk to hamburger. Inside its inventory system (a database) a given item might have a number of classication tags associated with it. For example a very specific brand of tangerines might be classifed as Citrus Fruits, which is part of Fruits, which in turn is part of Produce, which in turn is part of Food. All of those tags might be part of that item, depending on how finely Kroger classifes its items.
When a lender pulls your credit report from a CRA (Equifax or TransUNion or Experian) they can probaly see multiple tags for that account. These are provided so that if the creditor (or a credit scoring algorithm) wants to make fine distinctions, then it can. An Auto loan will be tagged as both an Auto loan and an Installment loan, for example.
Some FICO models do indeed make those ultrafine distinctions. For example FICO 8 Auto Enhanced places more weight on the presence or absence of well-handled Auto accounts than FICO 8 Classic does. The exact details of those distinctions are hidden in FICO's secret proprietary models.
One of the classiciations tags on your SS loan is Secured. That's because that's one way to classify credit accounts. For example an auto loan or a boat loan is a secured loan (typically) because the loan is secured by the boat or car itself. A mortgage loan is secured by the house itself. The lender can seize your boat or car or house if you don't pay. Personal loans come as both Unsecured and Secured, so they are tagged appropriately. Even credit cards are tagged as secured or not, as store or not, etc.
To answer Yapsalot's question, the SS loan technique has been well tested by people on this forum under FICO 8 Classic. There is no doubt here: when a person goes from a profile with no open installment loans (and an SS loan and a car loan and a student loan and a mortgage etc. are all of type installment), and then he uses the SS loan technique, he will almost certainly gain a significant number of points, assuming all his other scring factors remain the same. Different people will gain different numbers of points: e.g. a person with no derogs and at least a few years of age might gain more than a dirty profille.
Now, is it conceivable that some future scoring model or creditor might make a big distinction between secured personal loans vs. unsecured personal loans? Or secured credit cards vs. unsecured credit cards? Or auto loans vs. personal loans vs. student loans? Sure. It's possible. That's what the tags are there for. But its also possible that an asteroid could hit the earth tomorrow. Possible but in general people in their daily lives assume it won't. You should assume that the SS Loan Technique will help you a lot if you are one of the people it is designed for and that a typical creditor or model will see your mostly paid off SS loan as a big step up from having no I-loans of any kind.
as always, an impressive detailed explanation! did i say i like imploring your knowledge CGID?!? =p again, thanks man! thanks for all the things you do here in MyFico!
Very interesting and informative discussion and information shared back and forth here. My thanks to everyone on this thread.
My Latest Update:
First of all, it is now May 9th. My original (which was the initial autopay upon opening the account) auto payment agreement seems to have cancelled and not go through for sure once I have deleted off the schedule. As I have explained in my previous post, I have elected to make a small $0.25 payment every month for the next 2 years, and the first of such autopayment went through on May 2nd. No problem at all with that.
The bureaus reported the change to my SSL account on May 6, according to CreditCheckTotal. Since the 7th of each month, which was the original auto payment schedule date, happened to fall on a Saturday, I am not sure if the report date got pulled one day earlier. My hunch is that, as most everyone have suspected, Alliant reports account data at the end of the month, and that the update on the credit reports take a few days to show up in our reports.
Account opening date on my SSL seems to vary. I opened this account on March 30.
Experian: March 1st
Equifax: March 30th
TransUnion: March 30th
Date of "Status Updated" also seem to vary among the bureaus.
Experian: April 1st
Equifax: April 30th
TransUnion: April 30th
Mind you though, that Experian's latest data got updated on May 6th for me. So I think, on Experian's end, the date showing on the report is a bit odd.
And to reiterate, my original autopay upon opening up this account was set up for every 7th of the month. My first autopay went through on April 7th, exactly as it was scheduled. That took place AFTER I paid down the loan to $80 balance. After that, I DELETED the autopay, and now that original autopay amount doesn't seem to reoccur again.
I am in a NEW autopay, which I have set up to be $0.25 monthly payment on the first week of every month. The first of such autopay went through, just as it was scheduled on the exact date that I specified.
Credit Score Impact:
Mine jumped whopping 50 points, which bumped me back up into the 700s, at least with Experian. I am not sure what the data is like on the other bureaus, since I wasn't monitoring their FICO scores. (I have dropped MyFICO's slow and inconsistent update service back in March, before I opened this SSL). My scores dropped about 100 points after I closed my only active credit card in secured Capital One card, and opened 5 new unsecured credit cards since Jan 31st. So the score increase was from the high 670s back into the 720s. (Experian). My Equifax currently is the in the 750s and my TransUnion in the 790s, so I am not sure how much the impact is.
Bottom Line:
All of the burueus are showing a positive factor of "having significantly paid down the installment balance." I no longer see negative factor of "not having any active installment loans" on the reports. So even with the miniscule amount of $500 which I basically got back most of it with laughably minimal interest for the next 5 years, this technique has helped tremendously. If I haven't done this, at least with Experian, my score would still be swimming in the high 600s.
Again, I'd like to thank Dixie and ALL the contributors for this, and I will continue to monitor my account and provide update as necessary to serve as data point.