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I've been really focusing on paying everything down lately to get my utilization under 30% (it's at 38% right noow). I recently paid the balance on my auto loan ($1900), paying it off about 6 months early, to free up the $300 to put towards revolving debt. My score dropped 80 points! From 679 to 592! The comments on my auto loan are "closed" rather than paid in full, do you guys think this is why I had such a large drop? The only changes to my report are decreased balances, so I'm not sure what else it could be!
Hi Angiel, welcome to the forums!
Was the auto your only installment loan? If so, then paying it off and having it closed negatively affected your 'mix of credit', so you've been penalized. You would regain those lost points by adding a new installment - though I wouldn't recommend obtaining a loan you don't need just for the sake of scoring.
However, 80 points seems like a lot for closed loan / credit mix penalty -- are the scores you are monitoring FICO scores? Where are you getting them?
I have student loans as well that are installment loans. The scores I checked were from credit karma, capital one, citi, american express, and discover.
Where are you getting your scores from?
Was this your only open installment account? No other loans, car leases, etc?
If it was your only open loan, can you tell us the original amount of the loan and the balance just before payoff?
If you can tell us all of these things, we can likely shed some light on the score drop.
PS. I am also curious to hear what the interest rate was on the car loan and what the interest rate was on the credit cards that you are working to pay off.
Looks like many of us asked some of the same questions at the same time.
Can you list for us all your loans, including the recently paid off auto loan? Like this?
Loan 1. Balance = _____ Orginal Amount = ____
Loan 2. Balance = _____ Orginal Amount = ____
Loan 3. Balance = _____ Orginal Amount = ____
etc.
For the auto loan, tell us the balance just before payoff.
As far as your scores from Karma, you should ignore those since they are based on the Vantage model and no lender or CC issuer uses those to make decisions. Some of the other places you mentioned getting your scores from might also be giving you Vantage scores and those also should be ignored.
@Anonymous wrote:I have student loans as well that are installment loans. The scores I checked were from credit karma, capital one, citi, american express, and discover.
OK -- Credit Karma & Cap One scores are not FICO, so ignore those.
American Express offers two scores - a Transunion Vantage score and an Experian FICO 8 score -- which one are you looking at?
Discover: if viewing from your account as a card holder, then that is a Transunion FICO 8 score. If using Discover's free credit score site, then it is an Experian FICO 8 score.
Citi offers Equifax Bankcard enhanced version of FICO 8 (which is different from FICO 8 Classic).
So.... considering only your FICO 8 scores, how much did your scores drop? Was it still ~80 points?
It sounds like the OP has open student loans, so the closure of this auto loan shouldn't have ruined their credit mix.
Yes - all of the scores from various places are within 4/5 points of each other.
The original balance was $15,000, I paid the remaining $1,900.
I have other installment loans:
Fed Loan: Orig. $32,220 Current : $47,714
Fed Loan 2: 20,500 26,094
Fed Loan 3: 20,500 25,519
Fed Loan 4: 20,500 22,608
Fed Loan 5: 20,500 21,714
Navient: 3,500 2,154
Navient: 3,000 1,721
Navient: 3,061 0
@Anonymous wrote:Yes - all of the scores from various places are within 4/5 points of each other.
Just be sure to ignore the non-FICO scores. They seem to be within a few points of your FICO scores currently, which may cause you to [wrongly] believe that this will then always be the case... and if you saw a (say) 50 point drop to one of your non-FICO scores then it would mean your FICO scores would also drop around 50 points. Be aware though that this is not true at all and no direct relationship/comparison can be formed between FICO scores and non-FICO scores.