Paying down credit card balance decrease credit score,Why?

[Anonymous]

So, I paid a large total on both of my credit cards in one month and instead of the credit score increasing or staying the same with Equifax, it decreased instead. Why would the credit score decrease it paying your total credit card balance helps both your debt owed and the utilization rate as well? I'm confused....

[Anonymous]

This question gets asked daily it seems.  The answer is: it probably didn't lower your score, something else did.

Where did you get your credit score from?

Was this an "alert" from a credit monitoring site?

[Anonymous]

myfico sends me alerts......Well, I looked again and it shows the balance decreased, which is most updated information....Then it updated with old information about the same credit card. The first notification is showing the balance decreased. Then the second notification is showing the same balance increased., which is old news....So, because of the second notification the score decreased. The first notification is the what is correct though...

[Anonymous]

MyFico alerts have two parts which may have nothing to do with each other:

1. The item that triggers an alert (as set up in your alert preferences)
2. Your FICO score at the time an alert is triggered

The alert is NOT the reason your score went up or went down.  The alert triggers an email, and an alert also triggers a fresh pull of your FICO scores.

So you may have alerts set up to tell you when you pay down an account balance, and when your fresh FICO score is pulled, it looks at your entire profile.  The lower score was likely NOT due to the alert, but due to other changes on your profile since the last score.

[HeavenOhio]

You mentioned paying your "total" credit card balance. Are all of your cards currently reporting zero balances? If so, that's the reason for the score drop. For optimal scoring, let a small balance report on one card with the rest reporting zero. You don't have to pay interest to do that. That balance should come from new charges.

Having said that, if you were carrying balances on these cards (not paying the full balance each month), you did the right thing. Paying to zero resets the grace period, and that's more important than a temporary ding to your score.

[Anonymous]

Yes, keeping a small balance about 6% total utilization rate...

[Anonymous]

Okay, I realize the alert doesn't affect the score....However, the alerts are set up for credit score change and anything that affects report....

[Anonymous]

You got it!