Why would my score drop when the over all balance decrease?

[Anonymous]

What doesn't make sense to me is that I am paying down my accounts and pay to monitor my credit, and a new update shows the my Experian reported a decrease on my credit card account. But my score went down and not up. Why would it do that?

[Anonymous]

Decrease in balance alone will not drop your FICO score unless you paid every card to zero, something else must have caused the scoring drop, something unrelated to the alert trigger. Who are you using for monitoring, this happens often with myfico because not every score changing event triggers an alert and you won't know your score has changed until the next alert trigger-able event.

[Anonymous]

I am using myfico.com it just showed it dropped becuase of a decrease in my balance and don't show anything else, so I'm unsure.

[Anonymous]

We get this question at least once a week due to reasons I cited in the previous post. How much was the drop?

The only way to answer this question is to carefully compare your reports before the last update and now, unfortunately your report on myfico does not update with alerts (monthly or quarterly updates depending on subscription) so you will need a 2nd source, you can sign up for Experian Credit Works Basic or creditscore.com for free to get your current report, then compare it to your myfico Experian report.

[Anonymous]

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@AnonymousI am using myfico.com it just showed it dropped becuase of a decrease in my balance and don't show anything else, so I'm unsure.

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Your understanding of what happened here is incorrect.  It's not showing you that your score dropped because of a balance decrease.  Your balance decrease is resulting in an "alert" and at the time of an alert you're being provided with an updated score.  The score change and the balance change don't have to be at all related.  It's very important to understand how these alerts work, or you'll drive yourself nuts.