Auto Score Increase?

[Sean085]

Long story short I bought a used truck last year and I'm just wanting to move on to something else. I am in the process of rebuilding credit right now and want to purchase a brand-new vehicle middle of next year. I'm waiting now till the end of the month for my reports to update after I have paid my CC off. Anyway, my lender for my truck allows principal-only payments on top of monthly payments. I just made a $3000 payment last week (required monthly is $777.66). I don't plan on doing this till I pay it off just till I trade it in so my score does not drop. If I were to maintain paying double or even triple payments towards my truck each month, would this raise my auto score or have any real effect on it. 

Equifax-636

Transunion-643

Experian-585

[FlaDude]

I'm not too familar with auto scores specifically, but understanding is that generally scoring for loans and credit cards is based on crossing certain thresholds which I think are 9%, 29%, 49%, etc. You would need to look at your balance vs. the original loan amount and and see if you have paid or can pay an amount that would cross a threshold. Based on the scores you've listed, something is supressing them quite a bit, I'm not sure that improving utilization on the car loan will help a lot. Do you have credit card balances? Depending on the particulars, maybe paying towards those would be more beneficial. Beyond that hopefully one of the experts here will chime in and give more guidance.

[Thomas_Thumb]

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@Sean085 wrote:

Long story short I bought a used truck last year and I'm just wanting to move on to something else. I am in the process of rebuilding credit right now and want to purchase a brand-new vehicle middle of next year. I just made a $3000 payment last week (required monthly is $777.66). I don't plan on doing this till I pay it off just till I trade it in so my score does not drop. If I were to maintain paying double or even triple payments towards my truck each month, would this raise my auto score or have any real effect on it. 

Equifax-636

Transunion-643

Experian-585

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Double or triple payments will have no impact on score. Payment history only looks at whether or not payments are made on time. Aggregate balance to loan ratio B/L can impact score. However, the only significant point gain threshold is getting below 9%.

If you only have 1 credit card, let it report a small statement balance (under 9% of the card' credit limit) and then pay statement balance before due date. Rinse and repeat.

Note: If all credit cards report a $0 balance, your score typically gets penalized 15-25 points for"no recent revolving activity".

[CorpCrMgr1]

What else is on your credit report? Payments made on time for your vehicle loan will help your scores. I owe less then a third of my original balance, yet I'm told my balance is holding back my credit score. It's 846. 

[pizzadude]

You might consider saving that money towards your down payment for your next vehicle, especially if you'll be buying new vs used or if you expect interest rates to be higher than your current loan.

Also unless you know that your next lender pulls auto scores versus classic FICOs I would focus on optimizing your revolving utilization and / or cleaning up your reports to boost your scores.