Credit scores increasing, FICO dropping?

[Anonymous]

Hi, I'm looking for some advice as I am a little puzzled by my FICO score. I went from a high of 805 in May, down to 767 here in August. My Equifax and Transunion have been rising consistently and are currently at 796 and 803 respectively. The only recent changes were a Paypal charge account (smart connect) that they discontinued in June and moved to a new charge card. Unfortunately the old account was closed, there's nothing I can do and FICO is still slowly dropping month to month since. Is the closed account why my score dropped so much... length of credit history? Closed account? When will it level off?


Other info: I also have a Discover card, capital one card, mortgage and utitilities on my report. I have never missed a payment and have literally no balance on any of it except the mortgage and monthly utilities which are of course up to date. I had several auto loans previously which I paid off and never missed a payment. The only recent credit pull was to get a virtual terminal to take charge cards. I am self employed and looking to lease a vehicle for business and tax advantages, is 767 going to be good enough? What can I do?


Thanks for any advice or opinions.


Is there anything I can do to improve the FICO?

[Anonymous]

Hello ZackS.  Welcome to the forum!

You may want to clarify something for us.  You say that your "Equifax and Transunion have been rising consistently" but that your "FICO" has been steadily dropping during the last four months.  Is the "FICO" that is steadily dropping from the remaining credit bureau (Experian)?  Are the EQ and TU scores you are talking about not FICO scores?  (For example, are you getting them from Credit Karma?  In which case they would be Vantage 3 scores.)

You also mention that you have two credit cards and (possibly?) a PayPal charge card (unsure whether this is appearing on your reports or not).  What seems clear is that all of your cards show a $0 balance.  You will see a definite improvement in your scores if you allow one card to report a small positive balance (e.g. $10-20) each month while leaving the others reporting at $0.  The card that reports the positive balance should be a true credit card, not a charge card.

Do that and your scores will be plenty high enough to secure the best rates on your lease.