Will paying off my car nine months early help or hurt my credit score?

I bought a used car for about $1000. I financed it for a 12 month period. I have the money in savings to pay it off completely right now. Is it better for my credit score to pay it off right now, or should I wait and continue to make monthly payments. I have about 9 months left on the load.

Public Comments

1. help. a lot
2. Hi, You should pay half of it now. and some latter. when people look at your creadit. for example if you have 1000 credit limit, you should only use 30 percent fo it. if you have used more then 30 percent that your consider high risk. So pay of 70 percent and keep the rest for rainie days.
3. Car loans have little or no positive affect on your credit score but can be a real downer if you mess up on the loan.
4. It doesn't "help" your credit either way really. It is beneficial to see that you had a loan and the loan was paid off, however paying off early does not put an extra positive note on your credit. However, paying it off will save you some interest!
5. If you are trying to build credit, it looks better to have a longer, great payment history for them to see, than to see that you paid it off early. They want to see consistency in being on time over a longer period...
6. Pay it off regardless of what might happen to your score. That way, you/re out of debt and more of what you earn can go toward other things you might want. You will also save more money on interest payments.
7. Help , but since you only have a small balance I suggest you pay it off over a six month period to show responsibility..
8. Credit card accounts are different than installment loans. Paying off credit card balances of more than 30% of the limit, will help your score. But installment loans are a different category and count in your score diferently. Car installment loans won't help your score unless they are at least 12 months. If you really want to build your score. Make the monthly payments for the 12 months. However, paying it off now would save you interest.
9. paying off a 12 month loan in 3 months is useless - you won;t build any credit history doing that - why didn;t you just pay cash?
10. Either way it doesn't matter, if you pay it off early, it doesn't do much of a change in your credit but at least you save alot on interest. If you continue to do monthly payments, it still will have little affect of a increase of your score. But when you apply credit in the future, lenders will see you as a risk cause you don't have a long credit history, lenders like to see 24 month history on debts and that you have 1 year on this debt, doesn't help much.