scores drops when i pay down balance?

[Anonymous]

I am really confused as to how my balances affect my credit score. Late last month/early this month I made a purchase that moved my credit utilization up to 22%. When this happened my Experian and Equifax scores went up by 10 points but my Transunion score went down by 6 points. I recently payed down my credit card balance from 22% to 18% and it dropped my Experian score by 7 points (im not sure how it has affected my Equifax or TransUnion scores yet). This seems backwards to me.... my score goes up when I increase my balance and down when I pay down? Also, it seems like the same action has different effects on different bureaus. Am I missing something here? I thought 15 to 20% utilization was ideal but it seems like its not.... any adivce? 

[Revelate]

Welcome to the forums!

There are lots of fluctations both up and down on busy files that aren't going to correlate to the discrete monitored actions (balance changes).  Unfortunately the monitoring solutions don't trigger on many changes only select ones, and worrying about the small ups and downs is the route to insanity.

Focus on big picture, ideal aggregate utilization is actually <10%, and in general the smaller (non-zero) the better and the distribution among individual cards matters to both in individual credit card utilization, and the number of credit cards reporting a balance.

Anyway I know it's awkward and I used to get some events like this on my own file before it became far more steady state (thicker, more credit history, and less changes to my report on any given month) but simply make sure to never miss a payment and then you can optimize your revolving balances when needed.