I am paying down my credit cards rapidly. So why did my FICO score go down?

[tradmom]

Hi,

I just signed up with score watch a few weeks back.  We recently received an influx of money so I have paid off several cards and paying down others in the hopes of raising our score.  When I signed up our score was 634 (not good).  Today it went down to 609!!!!  I can't understand why it would go down after I have had several notifications of decreased account balances.  Can you explain this?  Many thanks!

[llecs]

Did every account have a balance decrease? If not, increases, especially from a $0 balance, can impact your FICO?

Were any CC accounts paid off? If so, were any of them closed? If so, that can impact utilization.

SW doesn't alert to dropped accounts. You'll find that most of your accounts will drop on the first of the given month. Did any accounts drop? If so, that can impact your length of history and/or your average age of accounts.

[tradmom]

Thanks for your reply.  No, I haven't closed any accounts.  Just paid off some accounts completely, others way down. Almost all the notifications I have received have been for decreased balances. I think one account had a slight increase about two weeks ago.  I have since then paid it off, but I don't think that has been reported yet. Also, there are other  accounts I have paid off that haven't  been reported yet.  Maybe I should just give it more time?