Morning Everyone! Curious if this happens often. We've been working on our credit and my wife's credit is pretty much spotless right now. All collections deleted, she has 3 open CC's. Discover $1k limit, Cap 1 $1,500 limit, and she's authorized user on my Navy Fed Rewards $15k limit.
I had a $4k (and change) balance on the card, and paid it down to $2,500 and her score went down over 10 points with Equifax and Experian. Her other CC's are at Zero.
Why would her scores drop down so dramatically, if all accounts are at Zero, and we're paying down our highest balance (therefore increasing CL avail as well as decreasing total debt) ?
@dannyb407 wrote:Morning Everyone! Curious if this happens often. We've been working on our credit and my wife's credit is pretty much spotless right now. All collections deleted, she has 3 open CC's. Discover $1k limit, Cap 1 $1,500 limit, and she's authorized user on my Navy Fed Rewards $15k limit.
I had a $4k (and change) balance on the card, and paid it down to $2,500 and her score went down over 10 points with Equifax and Experian. Her other CC's are at Zero.
Why would her scores drop down so dramatically, if all accounts are at Zero, and we're paying down our highest balance (therefore increasing CL avail as well as decreasing total debt) ?
Her score certainly did not go down because of your payment on your NFCU card.
Most likely it went down because her other 2 cards were at zero, and the algorithm simply did not take into account the AU card, so she got hit with the all zero penalty.
If absolutely nothing else changed on her reports between the 2 scores besides the balance on the AU card went down then it might be a fluke. You can get dinged for reporting no balance at all and this might be what is happening in the scoring model, but in this case they are not counting the AU card into that. AU cards have gotten a little strange in how they are factored into different scoring models.
Sounds like she is doing great either way and that the score will only go up over time! I wouldn't stress too much about AZEO unless you are applying for something very soon like within the next 2-3 weeks.
" I wouldn't stress too much about AZEO unless you are applying for something very soon like within the next 2-3 weeks"
Just to add a DP on this beautiful Sunday morning! A couple of months ago I had zero balances on all my cards except a Hawaiian Airlines Mastercard where I'm an AU. My scores dropped 22-21-17 points (EQ,TU, EX). The next month I left a balance on one of my cards and I recovered the points.
Hope you all are havin' a great weekend!! 
@dannyb407 wrote:Could be a good quess! @AllZero Any insights?
As mentioned up thread, primary account holder needs to report a non zero on her own account to recover lost points.
Best practice where FICO 8 is concerned is AZEO + AU card reporting a balance.
