Whoa...EQ dropped 28 points between yesterday and today with the addition of my auto loan. Gee whiz! I kinda had a hunch this was going to happen. :/
Matt- I am definately giving on figuring out FICO. I just refi'd both of my cars, one of the original loans shows as PIF, but the other still doesn't. So it now looks like I have 3 car loans and my score only went down 10 points. Sorry to here about the loss, but think of it this way, next time you go for a car loan you won't have such a hassle
To tell you the truth, I could really care less if my score tanks because of this. I have all the credit I need at the moment, so I'm not too worried about it. My main goal was to get a car loan, which I did, so I reached my goal. Next goal is an AmEx card, but I'm going to take a break from applying for credit for a few months first.
Do me (us) a favor. Repost in a few months when the account has time to age a bit. If my hunch is right, you will quickly recover those points. I posted a while back about my friend who got a new Cap 1 card with a great b/t offer and it tanked his score when Cap 1 reported. But after paying off only 1K, he has recovered all those points in just a few months.
Yeah once I saw how much it dropped, I thought to myself: What if I had put down $1K less, then taken that $1K and used it as a paydown like a month after the loan began reporting? I wonder if this would net me any points. Unless the loan amount is figured into the score, but I don't see how that could be since income is not plugged in for your score. After all, I could be making $100K /year (although I'm not).