auto lease payoff eq drops 14 points

[Anonymous]

so i payed off my lease  and i received a nice 40points bump for ex and tu but get a drop of 14 points  so now my scores are 740 tu 739 ex and 674 eq .....why is there such a huge disparity in score when everything on the 3 reports is identical

[Anonymous]

All three use different proprietary methodology to determine the scores.  I have pretty significant differences (40 plus points) between my highest and lowest scores. Paying off a car seems to cost most people points, no idea why.

[slipp3ry]

I'd love to know the scoring/reasoning behind why a score would drop when you pay a car off, for example.  I recently sold a car so that was 20K debt cleared and my FICO score went down 7 points.

[Anonymous]

The reason is you are no longer using credit as much in that case. It's a game where they are constantly trying to get you to use credit, but use it within their parameters. This encourages you to consume. 

One way around it, is to open a secured loan for a small amount with a credit union, and pay it off monthly (say, 1000 dollars over 5 years if your CU will let you). This keeps an installment loan open at all time on your credit, giving you the artificial boost.