Balance Decrese = Score Drop?

[estrickland1]

FICO EX dropped 7 points after it reported a $91 decrease on my CapOne balance. That card alone went from 90%'to 72% but my score dropped 7 points. There are no other alerts or negatives that could've accounted for the large score drop, my inquiries reported days ago so it wasn't them. It even said "the balance on one of your accounts has decreased" followed by the EX scoring dropping 7 points. This really pisses me off. I've been living on white bread and milk trying to lower my balances and when I do, I get punished. I might as well just go max out my cards and call it a day.

[Anonymous]

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@estrickland1 wrote:

FICO EX dropped 7 points after it reported a $91 decrease on my CapOne balance. That card alone went from 90%'to 72% but my score dropped 7 points. There are no other alerts or negatives that could've accounted for the large score drop, my inquiries reported days ago so it wasn't them. It even said "the balance on one of your accounts has decreased" followed by the EX scoring dropping 7 points. This really pisses me off. I've been living on white bread and milk trying to lower my balances and when I do, I get punished. I might as well just go max out my cards and call it a day.

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Frustrating isn't it? Don't go maxing anything out.

Scores fluctuate like blood pressure. That's a very minor decrease.

Was a baddie updated?

AAOA drop a month or two due to any new accounts?

[estrickland1]

Nothing has changed other than me paying a credit card balance. That minior drop took me from 13% risk to 25% risk. Any lower and I'll be knocked out of FAIR down to POOR

[Anonymous]

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@estrickland1 wrote:

Nothing has changed other than me paying a credit card balance. That minior drop took me from 13% risk to 25% risk. Any lower and I'll be knocked out of FAIR down to POOR

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Experian or Equifax?

[Anonymous]

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@estrickland1 wrote:

Nothing has changed other than me paying a credit card balance. That minior drop took me from 13% risk to 25% risk. Any lower and I'll be knocked out of FAIR down to POOR

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Don't sweat that "FAIR" and "POOR" rating crap.  Anyone looking at a credit profile that sees utilization taken down from 90-something percent to 70-something percent will view that as a positive, favorable step.

It's an impossibility that a drop in utilization caused your 7 point score drop.  The only time utilization dropping would hurt your credit score is if you dropped all over your balances to zero and they all reported zero which obviously isn't the case with you in this situation.  If you lost 7 points it was for a reason other than a utilization drop. 

You said you had "inquries" report days ago which means you applied for new credit.  Were you denied or approved?  If approved, that account or accounts are going to report which will drop your AAoA and also show up as " new account(s)" which will drop your score.  AAoA if you cross an integer threshold such has going from 3 years AAoA to 2.8 years AAoA will lower your score.  The good news is your score will usually rebound quickly from the AAoA drop and the new accounts; typically within 6 months one's scores are higher than they were at the time of apping.

I know this wasn't your question or purpose for posting, but with your scores being around 600 honestly the last thing you should be doing is apping at this time as it will only further drag down your score and/or keep you from growing your score as quickly as you would like.  You've already got a CC it seems, so your best bet is to simply garden for at least 6 months if not a year to age your accounts, pay down your utilization to 1% and allow your score to grow.

[Geordi]

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@estrickland1 wrote:

FICO EX dropped 7 points after it reported a $91 decrease on my CapOne balance. That card alone went from 90%'to 72% but my score dropped 7 points. There are no other alerts or negatives that could've accounted for the large score drop, my inquiries reported days ago so it wasn't them. It even said "the balance on one of your accounts has decreased" followed by the EX scoring dropping 7 points. This really pisses me off. I've been living on white bread and milk trying to lower my balances and when I do, I get punished. I might as well just go max out my cards and call it a day.

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Well try changing your diet to Honey Wheat Bread and chocolate milk and see if you regain some of those lost points

[estrickland1]

EX score dropped AGAIN! I paid $82 on a revolving account and I lost 8 points. My other scores go up while EX says f you! I lost 20 points since January 2nd with EX 

[SouthJamaica]

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@estrickland1 wrote:

FICO EX dropped 7 points after it reported a $91 decrease on my CapOne balance. That card alone went from 90%'to 72% but my score dropped 7 points. There are no other alerts or negatives that could've accounted for the large score drop, my inquiries reported days ago so it wasn't them. It even said "the balance on one of your accounts has decreased" followed by the EX scoring dropping 7 points. This really pisses me off. I've been living on white bread and milk trying to lower my balances and when I do, I get punished. I might as well just go max out my cards and call it a day.

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Your balance decrease would not have caused a reduction in your score.

[estrickland1]

There's nothing else that could have caused it. The alert said "change in score" then listed the balance decrease. No new inquiries. No new accounts (since the last update). No negatives reported on EX. 

[Anonymous]

I am guessing that you are a subscriber to the myFICO 3B Monitoring product, which gave you an "alert" that you are trying to describe for us.

The alert is describing a way your report has changed.  (In this case, one of your credit card balances went down.)  When an "alertable" event occurs, the MF 3B monitoring product pulls your score again.

The message is explaining what the alertable event was.  But there are a lot of events that are not alertable.  What must have happened (with 100% certainty) is that something else changed on your report, either on the same day or in the previous several weeks.  That other thing is what is causing your score to go down.  It's just that this bad thing apparently wasn't alertable, so your score wasn't pulled at the time.

Again, it's really important to understand what these alerts are and what they are not.  Most of us assume that when our score changes then MF sends us an alert telling us why.  This is not what the alerts are.  What the alerts do is tell you -- in a very limited set of circumstances, not all the time -- when the report has changed.  The alert is telling you what alertable event happened.

You should congratulate yourself that you are coming to understand scoring well enough to realize that a credit card balance going down ought not to cause your score to go down.  (The main exception would be if all your cards went down to $0.  There are few other exceptions that are far more rare, such as having exactly one positive balance which turned out to be on an AU or charge card.)

Some people find an "alert" based system confusing and unhelpful, since it cannot be relied on (even most of the time) to explain why your score has changed.  Such people switch to a system like CCT, which enables you to control when your score is pulled or (like me) they just use free tools to get their monthly FICO score and credit reports.
 
Some things are definite gray areas in credit scoring, where nobody knows for sure how FICO is working.  But CC balances are not one of them.  Decreasing your CC debt (except in the highly rare mentioned scenarios alluded to above) cannot cause your score to go down.