Balance Changes and how they're calculated into scores

[Anonymous]

Hello,

I've recently added a few credit cards in order to establish some credit and by doing that it appears that when my balance on those cards goes up my credit scores also goes up? i have also noticed that when I pay my credit card down and the balance decreases, my score then also is lowered... This is very frustrating, shouldn't the opposite be happening. My credit limits haven't changed. Please help me understand why this may be. I'm ready to payy off all of my debt at once in the hopes of my score increasing significantly and this has me very worried. thank you for reading and helping me with this!

[gdale6]

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@Anonymous wrote:

Hello,

I've recently added a few credit cards in order to establish some credit and by doing that it appears that when my balance on those cards goes up my credit scores also goes up? i have also noticed that when I pay my credit card down and the balance decreases, my score then also is lowered... This is very frustrating, shouldn't the opposite be happening. My credit limits haven't changed. Please help me understand why this may be. I'm ready to payy off all of my debt at once in the hopes of my score increasing significantly and this has me very worried. thank you for reading and helping me with this!

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Welcome to the My Fico family

IMO its something else thats causing the rise since increasing balances and the number of cards reporting is typically a Fico ding. What you have posted here is contrary to anecdotal knowledge of the Fico score. If you are not referring to a Fico score then all bets are off as it would be a FAKO and no one tracks how they respond to different inputs, no one uses them to make credit decisions.

[MarineVietVet]

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@Anonymous wrote:

Hello,

I've recently added a few credit cards in order to establish some credit and by doing that it appears that when my balance on those cards goes up my credit scores also goes up? i have also noticed that when I pay my credit card down and the balance decreases, my score then also is lowered... This is very frustrating, shouldn't the opposite be happening. My credit limits haven't changed. Please help me understand why this may be. I'm ready to payy off all of my debt at once in the hopes of my score increasing significantly and this has me very worried. thank you for reading and helping me with this!

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Hi there.

I agree with gdale that your situation doesn't sound like FICO scoring.

May I ask where your scores are coming from?

[Anonymous]

I did a power score update and the results were from "Fico Score 8" for all 3 bureau's.  I am doing my best to apply for a mortgage in May of this year and would love to get my score up to 700 at least. Currently on Fico Score 8 my equifax score is 642. I do carry alot of credit card debt and I have for the last 4 months so I am hopeful that when I pay it off this week in full I will see some major improvement before end of April/May. I have 1 recent late car payment, other than that I had 2 late amex credit card payments over a year ago. I increased my credit limits on 2 store cards but all of these cards will have 5% or less balances before Friday. 

[MarineVietVet]

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@Anonymous wrote:

I did a power score update and the results were from "Fico Score 8" for all 3 bureau's.  I am doing my best to apply for a mortgage in May of this year and would love to get my score up to 700 at least. Currently on Fico Score 8 my equifax score is 642. I do carry alot of credit card debt and I have for the last 4 months so I am hopeful that when I pay it off this week in full I will see some major improvement before end of April/May. I have 1 recent late car payment, other than that I had 2 late amex credit card payments over a year ago. I increased my credit limits on 2 store cards but all of these cards will have 5% or less balances before Friday. 

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Interesting. What you described in your first post is not rhe norm for scoring but I learned long ago that there are few hard and fast rules in this sometimes crazy world.

The lower you get your revolving utilization, both overall and individual accounts, the more your scores should improve but I'm curious about those late payments.

Scoring looks at not only the severity of a late payment (30, 60, 90 days) but also the recency of the lates and how many are reporting at the same time.

So if you don't mind could you share more details about those? When did the lates occur and how severe are they?

[Anonymous]

This currently happened to me as well.  My TU decreased by 3 points only for decreasing my balance on my credit card.

[IMCUTE2]

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@Anonymous wrote:

This currently happened to me as well.  My TU decreased by 3 points only for decreasing my balance on my credit card.

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This just happened to me I had a balance of $61 reporting on Equifax all scores are Fico scores paid Discover balance $49 score dropped 7 points. I've learned not to get too emotional with the day to day monitoring of my scores. In the end it will all balance out. No baddies at all lates etc. Score increased 3 weeks ago nothing reported no change as far as to what triggered the increase of 8 points now I pay balance off report 0 and score drops lol. Same thing happened with Experian got an alert a couple weeks ago increase 1 point no reason. Yesterday decreased 1 point Cli on SAMs card from 1100-5000 lol. I'm in the garden for 2 years until my inquiries fall off. Another interesting point is during my app spree for new accounts and CLI's HP 's there was no change to my score. So I'm not complaining at all just sharing. I'm expecting scores to drop as new accounts report. I'm happy with my results so I just have to weather the storm. 

[OCCA]

Hi Friends--

I really need some advice!  I have been working on my credit to improve my scores so I can qualify for a mortgage.  I have three (3) cards with lower limits that are newer and anotehr really old card with a pretty high limit that is rarely used.  For the last 6 months I have been keeping the two (2) newer cards either paid off or only carrying a balance of less than 15% of the credit limit.  One of these cards spntaneously increased my credit limit this week by $500.  I was pretty happy and thought I would see an increase in my scorres.  

Unfortunately I received two (2) alerts this morning advising that my EQ score decresed 29 points and that my TU score decreased by 11 points.  HUH?  The alert for EQ states that the decrease is due to the "balance percentage decreased" and the TU alert states that the score decrease is due to a "balance change".  The only Change is that my reported balance went from $6 to $0.  I'm not carrying balances on eitherof the other cards.  

What gives?  What could I possibly be doing wrong for my scores to decrease so drastically when I have $0 balances on all three (3) cards and just got a spontaneous credit linmit increase of $500?

Is this something I can dispute?  Help please!!

[gdale6]

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@OCCA wrote:

Hi Friends--

I really need some advice!  I have been working on my credit to improve my scores so I can qualify for a mortgage.  I have three (3) cards with lower limits that are newer and anotehr really old card with a pretty high limit that is rarely used.  For the last 6 months I have been keeping the two (2) newer cards either paid off or only carrying a balance of less than 15% of the credit limit.  One of these cards spntaneously increased my credit limit this week by $500.  I was pretty happy and thought I would see an increase in my scorres.  

Unfortunately I received two (2) alerts this morning advising that my EQ score decresed 29 points and that my TU score decreased by 11 points.  HUH?  The alert for EQ states that the decrease is due to the "balance percentage decreased" and the TU alert states that the score decrease is due to a "balance change".  The only Change is that my reported balance went from $6 to $0.  I'm not carrying balances on eitherof the other cards.  

What gives?  What could I possibly be doing wrong for my scores to decrease so drastically when I have $0 balances on all three (3) cards and just got a spontaneous credit linmit increase of $500?

Is this something I can dispute?  Help please!!

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There is no disputing a Fico score. This is pretty common, you have no revolving accounts reporting a balance and that is always a Fico score ding, let 1 card always report a small balance of no more than 9% it its CL. 10 to 20 bucks is good enough to. Once a card reports a balance you should recover those points