The opening post for this thread was a correct post about AAoA. Your score dropped when you paid off the mortgage because there is also a FICO scoring area for "types of credit" and you lost a major type of credit in your mix of accounts by closing the mortgage account. Nobody said that FICO seemed like a reasonable scoring method. It's not broken, this is just how FICO works. I think some of the reasons my score fluctuates are crazy too, but it is what it is and this what the lenders use.
