Will This Drop My Score

[Anonymous]

So I have a closed Credit One account on my credit report. Perfect payments. They closed it back in December for some stupid reason but I still had a balance on it. I've been paying on it every month and it shows it's in good standing and never late. I have $190 left on the account and I was planning on paying that off next week and being done with it but will that drop my score once it's updated with a $0 balance? I ask because FICO scores can do weird things and we are trying to apply for a mortgage and I don't want to hurt my scores any. 

Also, I only have 2 other credit cards and one that I'm an AU on. I am about to remove myself from the AU card but with the other 2...... last month I had one card reporting $0 and had paid the other down to $20. Well I wasn't thinking but that month was my year mark with that card and they charged the annual fee to that statement so instead of reporting $20, it reported $67. Which was 15% utilization for that card. My Experian dropped 20 points, equifax dropped 9 points and Transunion dropped 5 point. 

so fast forward to today, I paid it back down to $20 and I get an alert from Experian and Transunion that my balance has decreased but no gains in points!! What gives? How long will it take for me to get those points back? And even though FICO 8 didn't give me any points, could the mortgage scores possibly have gone up?

sorry for long message but thanks for any help you have. 

[CreditBob]

Authorized user accounts are treated very differently, especially if it were not an immediate parent. If another extended family member, relative, friend add you or you are having a company do this then the scores really will not do anything. If it was your mom or dad that added you as an AU then that would help. Closing an account changes the rules. You need to have at least one open revolving account that actually belongs to you to which you are responsible with the payments. On both the AU credit card & your own credit card pay off one to zero when it reports each month. The second card have a $ 5 balance on it when it reports. The authorized user card can be tricky because it is based off of the other person's account information. And if the other person runs a high balance when it report then your score is going to drop.

[Anonymous]

So do you think my score will drop if I pay credit one all the way down to $0?

[CreditBob]

If both cards that are open are at a zero balance, then yes it will drop. This is from experience. If you have multiple revolving trade lines, meaning two or more, only have a few dollar balance on one card.

[Anonymous]

Paying off the closed account will not have a scoring effect, unless it’s positive and crosses a threshold.

As stated above keep a small balance on one primary card and on one authorized user card for your best scores on version 8, assuming the authorized user accounts are counting on version 8. If not, then it’s not gonna have an effect.

To reach your best mortgage scores, you need five cards. And considering authorized user cards always count on the mortgage scores, you may want to rethink getting rid of those.

Yes the mortgage scores can change absent a change from version 8. I don’t know if I’m convinced that was the reason for the score change tho, your utilization change. If it were then you should’ve gotten the points back.

Where are you getting your scores from what kind of scores are they?

By the way, for the mortgage scores you do not need to maintain a balance on the authorized user card.