@Anonymous wrote:I have a $16,000 auto loan balance is $8,500 1 year old. If I pay it off would it lower or raise credit score.
If that's your only open installment loan you'll take a hit.
If you want to play reindeer games, double up your payment this month and see what the next due date is... a lot of lenders will skip the next month when you do this, and if so, instead of paying it off, pay it down to like $100 or whatever, and then let it sit for a while and take the FICO 8 goodness which is pretty installment utilization while ignoring the miniscule interest on that low balance. A very few lenders like DCU will only let you skip ahead a certain number of months, only mentioning that as DCU is probably the most popular auto loan creditor on the forums.
For me going from 60% to 9% with my installment loan aggregate utilization (could be that 19% or 29% works just as well we just don't have good data points yet) I gained 15-20 points across the board... was a happy day for me FICO wise 
If you pay it off it can always be sorted with an Alliant secured loan; however, if you already have the 1 year on the auto loan, might as well keep that tradeline open instead... older tradelines = better tradelines.
