SCORE GOES DOWN EVERY TIME I PAY OFF A CARD

[Anonymous]

Whenever I pay a credit card balance to zero, my FICO score drops 10 or 12 points.  Then my score goes back up, once I have a balance on the card. When I call FICO or EQUIFAX, they deny that this is even related, that there are no punitive measures taken for paying a card off.  But there is a direct correlation, I see it in my alerts here. Balance to zero, I lose points.  Anyone have any insight into this? 

[Anonymous]

Is it possible that when you are paying a card down to $0, it was perhaps the only card showing a positive balance at that time?  If so, then that will cause FICO to see all of your cards at $0, for which there is indeed a scoring penalty.

The good news is that the penalty will disappear once at least one card reports a positive balance.

FICO actually likes it when it sees that most of your cards are reporting $0 -- just not all of them.

[Anonymous]

Thank you--that makes sense.  I had indeed paid them all off this month.  I generally pay down to zero or close to zero every month, and I have been careful in recent months to leave 10 or 20 bucks, since my score has been acting this way, but I neglected to do that this month.  I'll try to leave a small balance on at least one card at all times, in the future.