Anyone test installment loan breakpoints with SSL?

[Anonymous]

---

@Anonymous wrote:

Shouldn't going from no installment loan to one that is paid down to a very small utilization theoretical be worth about 85 points since the category is worth 10%?

---

No, for a couple of reasons.  One, with a score range of 300-850 there's a span of 550 points, so 10% of that would be 55 points.  Second, an installment loan makes up half of an ideal "credit mix."  What I mean is that having an installment loan by itself with no revolving accounts is probably equal to having revolving accounts with no installment loan.  Therefore, you can probably theorize that each of these pieces is worth maybe 25-30 points... which has more or less been proven with the SSL technique and I'm sure there are data points out there on going from zero revolvers to having one (or more) as well.

[manyquestions]

I may be mistaken but I thought there was at least one report in the big SSI threads of a poster who didn't quite pay down the $500 loan enough and had it report at 11% or a little more and didn't get a bump but then paid it down below 10% the next month and got a big bump.  If someone wants to test it, a quick test would be to get the loan and let it report at 100%, 11%, and 9%.

[Anonymous]

Awesome idea, MQ. 

Going from no open loans at all to an SSL at 100% tells us whether the penalty of 100% is worse than the penalty of having no open loan at all.  (My tentative belief is that going from closed loans only to an SSL at 100% will get you a very small boost, but I have never seen that proven, and I could nvery easily be wrong.)

[Anonymous]

I share CGID's thought on the presence of an installment loan at 100% is probably better than none at all and should result in a few points gained.  What was proposed above with allowing the loan to report at 100%, 11% and 9% is essentially what I was getting at with my original post in this thread, just with perhaps 1 or 2 more stopping (test) points. 

I suppose if essentially no gain is realized at 11% and almost all of the gain comes at 9% or less, testing points above 9% may be a waste of time.  I do seriously question that though.  It just doesn't make sense to me if a SSL is viewed exactly the same as other types of installment loans such as auto loans that no points would be had in paying it down from 100% to 10%, but a big gain comes at 9%.  That just seems to go against what we have generally have believed as a group regarding installment loans, as many people have reported scoring gains across the way in paying them down across supposed thresholds (say, 70%).  Of course, with those other loan types being paid down over much longer periods of time, far more variables are introduced into the equation.

[SouthJamaica]

---

@manyquestions wrote:

I may be mistaken but I thought there was at least one report in the big SSI threads of a poster who didn't quite pay down the $500 loan enough and had it report at 11% or a little more and didn't get a bump but then paid it down below 10% the next month and got a big bump.  If someone wants to test it, a quick test would be to get the loan and let it report at 100%, 11%, and 9%.

---

That's sort of what happened with me. At  around 15%  I got "loan balances too high". Then when I paid it down to 9% I got my big bounce.

[SouthJamaica]

---

@Anonymous wrote:

Awesome idea, MQ. 

Going from no open loans at all to an SSL at 100% tells us whether the penalty of 100% is worse than the penalty of having no open loan at all.  (My tentative belief is that going from closed loans only to an SSL at 100% will get you a very small boost, but I have never seen that proven, and I could nvery easily be wrong.)

---

My recollection is that going from zero installment loans to an SSL mean a small score drop across the board. In my case the SSL first reported at 87% rather than 100%, so it's possible that reporting initially at 100% might be even a little worse.

Dropping utilization to 15.4% got most or all of those initially lost points back.

Dropping it further to 9% got me my 20 point bonus.

[medicgrrl]

Friday my score was 673. Saturday it increased to 683 as we hit a new month. Changes were AAoA hitting 4 years 4 months, last late reaching 6years 1 month, AoYA being 1 month and oldest account 21years 1 month. Today my score increased an additional 7 points. I looked at every account. The only change was my auto loan updated. This is Experian only, as I don't have a daily monitoring service for my other FICO score. New balance is 95.2% Hope this helps.

[manyquestions]

---

@Anonymous wrote:

It just doesn't make sense to me if a SSL is viewed exactly the same as other types of installment loans such as auto loans that no points would be had in paying it down from 100% to 10%, but a big gain comes at 9%. 

---

And yet I believe that is what we have seen so far from what posters have reported. That's where the idea of going straight to the 9% breakpoint came from. In the older threads, posters who were paying their small installment loans slowly weren't seeing any significant point gain, but would report a big bump when the loan was near paid off.  I'm starting to think that  the other types of installment loan, especially mortgages, might be treated a bit differently from our SSL.  Do auto loans have the same breakpoints as mortgages?

[Anonymous]

---

@manyquestions wrote:

---

---

And yet I believe that is what we have seen so far from what posters have reported. That's where the idea of going straight to the 9% breakpoint came from. In the older threads, posters who were paying their small installment loans slowly weren't seeing any significant point gain, but would report a big bump when the loan was near paid off.  I'm starting to think that  the other types of installment loan, especially mortgages, might be treated a bit differently from our SSL.  Do auto loans have the same breakpoints as mortgages?

---

---

There are definitely some differences between mortgages and other installment loan types with respect to utilization break points. 

It would seem from the data in this thread that there are differences between SSLs as well and other installment loan types if paying one down from 100% to 10% yields essentially no score gain and the gain comes from crossing the 9% threshold.

[SouthJamaica]

---

@manyquestions wrote:

---

@Anonymous wrote:

It just doesn't make sense to me if a SSL is viewed exactly the same as other types of installment loans such as auto loans that no points would be had in paying it down from 100% to 10%, but a big gain comes at 9%. 

---

And yet I believe that is what we have seen so far from what posters have reported. That's where the idea of going straight to the 9% breakpoint came from. In the older threads, posters who were paying their small installment loans slowly weren't seeing any significant point gain, but would report a big bump when the loan was near paid off.  I'm starting to think that  the other types of installment loan, especially mortgages, might be treated a bit differently from our SSL.  Do auto loans have the same breakpoints as mortgages?

---

My auto loan behaved exactly like the small SSL, but Tom_Thumb has theorized that it may have been treated differently than a normal auto loan because I paid if off very quickly (6 months).