This is why I don't play with my Fico Score. This happened to me a couple of years ago, where I suffered a pretty severe drop in score for paying off all of my debt, to the point where I had to change insurance companies because my old one inflated my premiums a great deal because of it, even though my score recovered mere months later. And this is exactly why I no longer care about my score. It's just the fact that I felt like I was being punished for finally being responsible with money. But that is how the scoring model works. It only measures debt, so if you don't have any reporting, they penalize you for it. I don't know if they have a 1% minimum or not, but $10 puts you at less than 1% utilization from a math perspective.
As it stands now, I somehow lucked out in that a couple of my statement closing dates are a few days before I pay all of my bills anyway, so I always have 2 or 3% reporting to inflate my score, but I wouldn't care if it didn't. The insurance company I'm with now isn't so jumpy when it comes to my score (and I know this because it took another hit when I closed all of my accounts halfway through my first year with them) - they actually care about my driving record, imagine that.
