Paid Credit Cards

[Anonymous]

I paid 2 credit cards off that were in good standing. Experian reported one of the accounts paid account and dropped my score by 7 points.
Now I’m concerned that when I pay my others, my score will drop significantly. I’m trying to improve my score, which are good, but want to raise before applying for mortgage.

[Anonymous]

When you say you’re paying them, I assume you mean paying them to zero. If so, keep one with a $6-7 balance, let that report, then pay it off. If all others are at $0, you’ll be maximizing your scores from a credit card viewpoint. Also, mortgage scores love seeing cards with no balance, so doing this will help raise your mortgage scores as well.

[FlaDude]

As @ImTheDevil alluded to, there are a variety of FICO scoring models for different purposes (mortgage, auto loan, etc.). The places where you get you FICO scores for free generally show what's known as FICO 8. If you are planning on getting a mortgage, you might want to pay for you full suite of 24 scores (8 models times 3 credit bureaus) so you can focus on the mortage ones.