Point drop

[Anonymous]

Experian does say what is good and what is bad and I got a message that my utilization was bad this month. Everything else was still marked as good.

I have another credit card that was zero balance and my Fingerhut account that I started to rebuild credit with at a zero balance. I never use it because it is a rip off but it gave me my first credit. They up my line of credit every few months and that always makes a small drop but I checked and it is the same.

I took a small loan from my bank and paid that off in February. I checked all 3 credit reports there is nothing new or bad on any of them. The only change was buying these tickets that I paid in full 5 days before my score dropped.

[SouthJamaica]

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@Anonymous wrote:

Experian does say what is good and what is bad and I got a message that my utilization was bad this month. Everything else was still marked as good.

I have another credit card that was zero balance and my Fingerhut account that I started to rebuild credit with at a zero balance. I never use it because it is a rip off but it gave me my first credit. They up my line of credit every few months and that always makes a small drop but I checked and it is the same.

I took a small loan from my bank and paid that off in February. I checked all 3 credit reports there is nothing new or bad on any of them. The only change was buying these tickets that I paid in full 5 days before my score dropped.

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If you had 3 revolving accounts, and all 3 reported a zero balance, you would get an "all zero" penalty. But it is doubtful that that alone would cause a 56 point drop. Typically it causes a drop in the neighborhood of 20 points.

If you took out a loan, and it reported at > 10% of the original loan amount, that too could have cost you points in several ways.

[Anonymous]

i didn't take out a new loan. I took it out well over a year ago and paid it off months ago. I make minor purchases on 1 card and pay off monthly. The only thing different this last mo th was the ticket purchase that I paid off. 

I am guessing nobody has an answer and I can't contest it. It just puts my buying a house at least another 6 to 9  months out. It is frustrating to get dinged with no real reason why.

[FireMedic1]

Its hard to answer because its lacking more info. I took a few sentences from your posts:

"I used my credit card to buy tickets for that extra protection."

What is extra protection?

"It claims it is because my utilization went up from 3% to 7%."

This is not going to lower a score that much.

"Experian does say what is good and what is bad and I got a message that my utilization was bad this month."

7% is not bad. Ignore that.

"They up my line of credit every few months and that always makes a small drop but I checked and it is the same."

Scores dont go down with CLI's unless its a HP

We're trying to help you, but none of it is making sense for the point loss. Theres something in the background your not seeing. Pull your free annual credit reports and go over them. https://www.annualcreditreport.com/index.action 

[Phana24]

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@Anonymous wrote:

i didn't take out a new loan. I took it out well over a year ago and paid it off months ago. I make minor purchases on 1 card and pay off monthly. The only thing different this last mo th was the ticket purchase that I paid off. 

I am guessing nobody has an answer and I can't contest it. It just puts my buying a house at least another 6 to 9  months out. It is frustrating to get dinged with no real reason why.

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Plz review previous answers and take special note of the following:

1) Calm down.  I can literally hear the frustration in your post.  I would guess that the vast majority of us who rebuilt our credit had some unexpected slam to our FICO scores.  This is a learning opportunity, not reason to panic.

2) If your credit utilization went from 3% to 7% that is NOT the only reason for 57 points.  Some cards(especially Synchrony) will report early on any high balance for new users, or even experienced users if you exceed 50% of the card's limit.  If you went to 70-90% on THAT card's limit, it might be possible, but I doubt it.

3) Get a free CR from EX and one other CRA at annualcreditreport.com since they're free.  You can now get these weekly.  It's entirely possible there's an error or something else occurred that you can quickly address.

4) In the very unlikely event it was strictly related to utilization(both individual card and overall) the good news is it will go away the next reporting cycle, not six months.

5) With respect to your house, remember mortgage scores are based on a totally different FICO than your credit card FICO.  When you get ready to think about house-hunting, subscribe to MyFico or Credit.com and get your mortgage scores and make sure they are where you need to be BEFORE you even go looking.  Good luck.