topic Re: Simulators saying my score will decrease after paying off CC balance? in Understanding FICO® Scoring

Simulators saying my score will decrease after paying off CC balance?

Anonymous — Wed, 19 Aug 2020 16:03:20 GMT

In July I paid off a $1000 CC balance, bringing the balance to $0. I've been plugging this information in to Credit Wise and Credit Karma simulators and both say this will decrease my credit score by almost 100 points. How is that possible? Wouldn't paying off CC balance result in lower utilization, thus a boost to my credit score?

Re: Simulators saying my score will decrease after paying off CC balance?

dragontears — Wed, 19 Aug 2020 16:14:46 GMT

@Anonymous wrote:
In July I paid off a $1000 CC balance, bringing the balance to $0. I've been plugging this information in to Credit Wise and Credit Karma simulators and both say this will decrease my credit score by almost 100 points. How is that possible? Wouldn't paying off CC balance result in lower utilization, thus a boost to my credit score?

1. No simulator is completely accurate, most of the time it is straight garbage or at least a wild guess at best

2. Both credit karma and creditwise are Vantage scores so those scores are not used by the vast majority of leaders

Re: Simulators saying my score will decrease after paying off CC balance?

Girlzilla88 — Wed, 19 Aug 2020 17:22:41 GMT

If this is the only card you have you definitely don't want it to report 0 either, Will it drop it 100 points unlikely lol but you will get a penatly for have 0 balance on your only card.

Re: Simulators saying my score will decrease after paying off CC balance?

SouthJamaica — Wed, 19 Aug 2020 17:26:23 GMT

@Anonymous wrote:
In July I paid off a $1000 CC balance, bringing the balance to $0. I've been plugging this information in to Credit Wise and Credit Karma simulators and both say this will decrease my credit score by almost 100 points. How is that possible? Wouldn't paying off CC balance result in lower utilization, thus a boost to my credit score?

We would need to know what other accounts you have, with the limit and the balance of each, to give you an idea as to what effect the payoff will have on your score.

As others have said, don't pay attention to the simulators.

Re: Simulators saying my score will decrease after paying off CC balance?

Anonymous — Wed, 19 Aug 2020 17:59:43 GMT

I can't think of any circumstance when paying off a CC would result in a 100 point score drop under any scoring model. Further proof here that scoring simulators are trash.

Re: Simulators saying my score will decrease after paying off CC balance?

Anonymous — Wed, 19 Aug 2020 19:00:55 GMT

If simulators were accurate it would be too easy for us to reverse engineer the algorithms.

Re: Simulators saying my score will decrease after paying off CC balance?

Anonymous — Wed, 19 Aug 2020 20:43:35 GMT

I think many people that see value in simulators had a few instances early on of them "getting it right" and continue to use them thinking they'll always get it right or close.