Confused about Credit Score

[Anonymous]

I am new to this forum and relatively new to credit reports.  My credit card balances are high (1k limit using 85% to 90% of credit) and my student loan balances are high as well.  I have never missed payment on my car loan (13 months thus far), student loans (4 months thus far), CC payments (5 months thus far) and I am paying on a bank debt that they agreed to delete when it is paid in full, paid one collection agency in full (they will be deleting their account at the end of the month from my report), and have a state tax lien that is not listed that is released and fully paid however will stay on my report till 2017 since you cannot get state tax liens off (or can you?).  The summary of my report is public records 1 (tax lien), 18 inquiries (high what can I do?  Just wait it out I guess), 10% credit card and retail debt $2498, insallment debt $87637(student loan debt), account ever late 0, collection accounts 3 (will be 2 after this month and working on the 2 remaining), real estate and other debt 0.  Very high score 545. 

Since I have been trying to get my repair my credit this is the lowest score I have had.  I am so confused.  I just had a 621 now I have a 545 after I monitor my credit.  What can I do?  Transunion is 582 equifax 651.  The difference is so drastic it just does not make sense.  I am paying down my cc's and not using them, getting the collections of my account, paying on student loans, etc.  It just seems as if my score went the opposite way after I started caring for my credit.  Any suggestions?

PS - everything on credit report is accurate so no need to disupte (already done in the past). 

[ezdriver]

Forget about scores until your report is totally clean of those baddies. Focus on building a strong credit PROFILE and it will produce good score. Chasing scores is a fool's errand.

[Nickkifu]

If you are using 85-90% of your credit limit that is a problem.

you should try to keep your debt utilization around 9%

[CS800]

Although for utilization, EX on their site (if you have their monthly monitoring) says under 16% total util is good (random number)

[kmacqua]

Are your scores FICO or FAKO scores? Where are you getting them from and we can tell you.  Were they pulled around the same day with the same info in your credit reports (e.g. could it be that one of the removed collections was hanging out on your TU report, dragging that score down?)?

Time is your best friend here.  Time to pay down your credit cards and get that utilization rate under 9%; Time to pay off the PFD collection and get that removed; then time to thicken your file/lengthen your good payment history.