Jsmply

Hey everyone, I have a question regarding car loans and my credit report. I took out a car loan in February for my s2000 (first time I used a loan) and around May or so I signed up for freecreditreport.com's offer and my car loan did not show up. I contacted my credit union and they said they would look into it.

Today I finished paying off the loan (about 9 months or so, it was not for the whole car . . . a lot was paid for in the downpayment) and I ran a credit report on freecreditreport.com again and it STILL does not show my car loan. The only open account is my credit card.

It shows my credit score as excellent (739), however I was hoping that working hard to pay off my car loan in a year would be a big positive effect on my credit score (my credit is still relatively new) and it never seemed to show up on the report. Should I be concerned?

Under the things that shows the explanations of my score one of the positives is that I don't show any Installment loans and this shows lenders I don't have other stuff to pay for. I suppose this could be true, however should I still be concerned it never showed up? I won't be taking another car loan for several years probably and I was hoping when i did the fact I had paid off my last one in a years time would get me an awesome rate (this time was not that bad, 4.6%).


PS: Right now I use one credit card for everything, but always pay the balance off pretty quickly. What is better to keep getting my score higher, should I keep using one card or use a few different accounts (and pay them off quickly as well)? I just applied for a second card today just to try to diversify. Not sure if that is the best thing though.

Thanks and God's blessings,

- J

Controller

I don't think I really have an answer to your questions. Maybe there is an expert in the field here that can. But.. I use one card for living expenses and pay the balance off as the statement comes in, monthly. And, I have a bunch of other cards that I have used, some of them for nearly 20 years, off and on.. and others I acquired just for their 0% or very low interest rates to carry a balance for that duration. And I mean a BUNCH. When I get the right offer for a very low rate for as long as it takes to pay the balance, I will take it if I feel it's the right move for me, I use it as a low interest rate loan, always under 4%, but alot of them are 0% or slightly higher. I never use cash, except to pay tolls, lol, and always take advantage of the VISA card warranty protection on major purchases. It does not bother me to carry a balance on a low interest rate card, because I can pay them all off at any given point in time if I need to. Plastic is great if you know how to manage it. And, my credit score is about as high as you can get it.

Jsmply

Thanks for the input, does anyone have any advice regarding my car loan not showing up?

magician

When you get your free credit report you are given the means to request an investigation on items on that report. I'm no expert, but it seems to me that you could ask the credit reporting agency to contact your credit union and get those data on your report: good data that belong there but are missing is as harmful as bad data that don't belong there.

Did you get reports from all three agencies, or only one? If only one, you may find that the car loan appears on the others.

Jsmply

Well someone, somewhere knows about it because I remember when I signed up for an online savings account once, it asked me to verify my indentity by confirming who my car loan was with.

I did not get all three reports though, I got the equifax one that came from freecreditreport.com's credit monitoring service. Could my car loan NOT sure up on one of the three major ones? That seems like a big thing to be missing, what if it was deliquent?

Also, you can despute it but it seems to only be for items that are there. I couldn't find a way to despute something that was MISSING.