Confused

[cgennin]

I have been a myFICO member for over a year and a regular visitor much longer than that. My credit was pretty messed up due a previous marriage during which my exhusband took me to the bank, so to speak. Five years ago, I suffered a traumatic brain injury after which I was out of commission for quite a while and my credit suffered again. Fortunately, I have recovered much more than expected and so has my credit. However, the past month or so it seems to be going back down and I am confused. Specifically, I will pay down balances by paying 4-5 times amount due and get alerts that my utilization decreased as did my score? Why would this be happening? 

My cards are as follows:

AMEX BCE  $5,950/$27,000

Discover $10,867/$15,700

Chase Sapphire Preferred $6,953/$8500

Bank of America $0/$8000

Victoria's Secret $35/$2,800

Pottery Barn $0/$1,500

Overstock $0/$1,150

My current FICO (compared to a year ago):

EQ 656 (up from 630)

TU 648 (up from 635)

EX 691 (up from 663)

[Anonymous]

What I have read here, IIRC, is no single card over 29% and total usage under 9% for best FICO without AZEO.

[SouthJamaica]

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@cgennin wrote:

I have been a myFICO member for over a year and a regular visitor much longer than that. My credit was pretty messed up due a previous marriage during which my exhusband took me to the bank, so to speak. Five years ago, I suffered a traumatic brain injury after which I was out of commission for quite a while and my credit suffered again. Fortunately, I have recovered much more than expected and so has my credit. However, the past month or so it seems to be going back down and I am confused. Specifically, I will pay down balances by paying 4-5 times amount due and get alerts that my utilization decreased as did my score? Why would this be happening? 

My cards are as follows:

AMEX BCE  $5,950/$27,000

Discover $10,867/$15,700

Chase Sapphire Preferred $6,953/$8500

Bank of America $0/$8000

Victoria's Secret $35/$2,800

Pottery Barn $0/$1,500

Overstock $0/$1,150

My current FICO (compared to a year ago):

EQ 656 (up from 630)

TU 648 (up from 635)

EX 691 (up from 663)

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MyFICO alerts don't provide reasons for a score change. There are certain events which trigger MyFICO alerts.
If there happens to be any difference between your present score at that particular bureau and the previous score reported to you from that bureau, the score change is tacked on to the alert. There is not necessarily any connection at all between the score change and the alert substance.

Bottom line, something else triggered the score decrease.

[Anonymous]

I am guessing that you are a subscriber to the myFICO 3B Monitoring product, which gave you an "alert" that you are trying to describe for us.  Is that right?

The alert is describing a way your report has changed.  (In this case, one of your credit card balances went down.)  When an "alertable" event occurs, the MF 3B monitoring product pulls your score again.

The message is explaining what the alertable event was.  But there are a lot of events that are not alertable.  What must have happened (with 100% certainty) is that something else changed on your report, either on the same day or in the previous several weeks.  That other thing is what is causing your score to go up.  It's just that this bad thing apparently wasn't alertable, so your score wasn't pulled at the time.

Again, it's really important to understand what these alerts are and what they are not.  Most of us assume that when our score changes then MF sends us an alert telling us why.  This is not what the alerts are.  What the alerts do is tell you -- in a very limited set of circumstances, not all the time -- when the report has changed.  The alert is telling you what alertable event happened.

You should congratulate yourself that you are coming to understand scoring well enough to realize that a credit card balance going down would be very unlikely to cause your score to go down.  (The only exception would be if you paid all your cards to $0.)

Some people find an "alert" based system confusing and unhelpful, since it cannot be relied on (even most of the time) to explain why your score has changed.  Such people switch to a system like CCT, which enables you to control when your score is pulled or (like me) they just use free tools to get their monthly FICO score and credit reports.
 
Some things are definite gray areas in credit scoring, where nobody knows for sure how FICO is working.  But CC balances are not one of them.  Having almost all of your CC debt paid off is always good.  You need to keep working toward that end.

[cgennin]

@SouthJamaica,

I understand that completely. I have tried to determine what could have caused that, but the only other thing that has changed is my balance is a little bit lower. I am putting about the same amount of usage on each month as I have over the past year. I thought I was figuring this out. Just today, my AMEX increased from 9k to 27k, so maybe that will help slightly.

[cgennin]

@CreditGuyinDixie:

Thank you. Yes, I am trying to decide what could have possibly happened. It is helpful to know that the alerts do not necessarily correspond to the score changes, but confusing at the same time.