FICO dropped 80 points; no late payment; no student loans

[Kevinception]

I have a discover card that gives your fico score on the statement. In december, i was at a 770 then for this statement i dropped to a 689. I pay in full on both credit cards (discover and kohls) and I always use only 20% of my limit. For december however, i used about 57% of my limit on discover and 60% of my limit on kohls; and both were paid in full as the statement generated. I've had the Kohls card for 2 years and the discover for 10 months. I have paid off my student loans 5 months ago (never missed a payment). Does it make sense that there would be such a drastic drop by using the credit percentage for just one month? I've never pulled a credit report but would this warrant it, and if so, which site should I use?

[Gunnar419]

Given that your file is relatively thin and your AAoA short, it's possible you could have that kind of drop from high util. If you want to make sure there's no unknown hurting you, annualcreditreport.com is the place to pull a free report.

[user5387]

There's no memory for credit scores, so "just one month" is certainly applicable.

There are a couple of factors that come to mind.

One is that you have balances on both cards, and this affects utilization scoring, since FICO looks at the proportion of accounts with balances.

The other is that a negative like high utilization tends to have a larger impact on someone with high scores (770).

I personally have seen around a 50-point swing for high scores, based on one card at 50% utilization or not.

[guiness56]

Did those high balances report to the CRAs?  From what you said about paying at the statement cut date it is possible that is what happened.

[Anonymous]

Might be timing on the payment and reported balance to the CRBs. If the high utilization happen to be the reported balance it certainly could affect the score. 80 points seems too much. Others need to weigh on this toic.

[guiness56]

If you haven't done so, pull all three of your reports from annualcreditreport.com.  One free from each CRA every 12 months.

[Repo-ed]

It's just the reported util%

[bettercreditguy1]

Sounds like a possible utilization item. What are your credit limits on each card and what did you charge for the month? Anything near or over 50% util. will hurt you until next month when the payment(s) post. Fico has no memory.