My score dropped by 14 points because I paid off a credit card???

[Anonymous]

Really?? I paid of a credit card and Equifax dropped my score by 14 ponts. Everyone else raised my score. Who knew this would happen.

[gdale6]

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@Anonymous wrote:

Really?? I paid of a credit card and Equifax dropped my score by 14 ponts. Everyone else raised my score. Who knew this would happen.

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If all your cards are reporting a 0 balance then yes that equates to a Fico score drop of some points 14 is not uncommon to see. Let 1 card always report a small balance of no more than 9% of its individual CL as the Fico system will ding for the non use of revolving credit. Welcome to the board

[Anonymous]

That happened to me when I paid a car off. Score dropped 14 points, but then when the recalculation of total debt came out it bounced back. 

[ChrisDeL]

I feel your pain. I just sold my house and when the loan payoff was recorded, my score dropped by 27 points! Forturately, I was already in the process of locking in my new mortgage prior to the drop, so I don't think it will effect me.  I couldn't believe I had a drop after this payoff, especially one so signifigant. Very frustrating.

[Anonymous]

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@Anonymous wrote:

Really?? I paid of a credit card and Equifax dropped my score by 14 ponts. Everyone else raised my score. Who knew this would happen.

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Your score would only drop if that was your only credit card reporting a balance and now it is reporting a zero balance along with any other cards you may have.  If your other scores did not drop as well, it means that the new 0 balance didn't report to the other 2 bureaus yet.  When it does, you can expect those scores to drop as well. 

The good news is that all you need to do is allow any of your cards to report a small balance and those points will come right back.  If this is your only card, you'll have to wait 30 days but if you have another card that is going to report in the upcoming week or two that's all you'll have to wait to see your scores bounce back as long as you allow that card to report a small balance (say $5).

[xenon3030]

Is there a difference on keeping a small balance only on one card or on several cards?

I have multiple cards and I like to keep them active and use them to maximize cashback but doing the precise payments in time would be difficult. Do I lose ~10-20 points, if I keep a small balance (e.g. <20$) on multiple cards instead of one card only?

[Anonymous]

If 50% or more of your cards report a balance, you may experience a slight score ding, but not nearly what it would be if you allowed them to all report $0.  I say may because not everyone does.  Aggregate or overall utilization is King, so as long as your total utilization is in the 1%-9% range it's not going to adversely impact you much, if at all if you allow more than 50% of your cards to report a balance.

I just realized BTW that this thread was brought back to life after nearly 2 years of inactivity.

[xenon3030]

I experienced reporting a total balance of ~7-8% of total CL by 3 cards and over 3 months (each CC balance ~20-27% of CC limit) results a horrible Fico8 EX score drop (~60-70). There might be some other parameters that impacted the high Fico8 drop like reporting also a small possible balance on the rest of the cards (4 cards) and therefore, having ~50% or more CCs reporting balances.The large fluctuations might be also due a short age of the accounts (<3 y).

Immediate payment of the balances (keeping a small balance on 2 CC) resulted +25 Fico improvement in a period of two months. EX simulations do not give precise results on the required time to heal the Fico8 but it says the score would reach its prior value after ~7 months of regular payments.

[Anonymous]

My scores dropped across the board as well not by much but it still mattered. My individual utilization went from 0% to 6% on my Cap1 since I opted to let the balance report this month vs. last July where I did not leave a balance to report to circulate the balance among my 3 revolvers. I am not sure if that is what caused the decrease.

July Scores were:

EX: 727

EQ: 710

TU: 719

August Score as of 8/17

EX: 724

EQ: 710 at some point in between 8/1 through 8/16 it went up to 716

TU: 713 at some point in between 8/1 through 8/16 it was at 726

My factors have remained the same since I have had a Fico score in March of this year. I have short credit history, longest being 11 mos. AAoA is 6 mos. So really not sure if the age is what is affecting my scores to flactuate as such, or is it drastically raising the Utilization from 0% to 6%. I plan to just report Cap1 with a balance and the other two to stay at 0%. But I am so confused. I also noticed that on CCT, my Cap1 balance of $30 is being marked as paid. So could that be another reason, that although the balance was reported, that because payment was made the same time the statement cut off, that it is treated by the Fico scoring system as %0 balance?