need help and advise to maintain my fico score

[velocity]

My fico score keep dropping for the past 4 months. I paid my bill on time, no matter it's a $25 charged or a $250 charged, my fico score keep dropping 10- 25 pts. Today my score dropped 25 pts because of a $34 charged of a $1500 CL, can anyone give me some advise on how to stop this drop? I'm scare to see this drop again, is that mean I shouldn't use my credit cards at all?

Any advise and help would be appreciated!  

[Anonymous]

By any chance did you have a balance increase on any of your accounts? As well, you might have many accounts with balances thats bringing your score down.

[RobertEG]

Look at three things.  Overall %util, %util on each card, and % of cards reporting balances when posted to the CRA. 

Overall %util counts for about half, but if one card has a high %util, or if more than half of cards report any balance, these all hurt in the other half of %util scoring.

[Anonymous]

Velocity,

Robert is right on the multitude of factors. Here are some things to think about that commonly happen during the holiday season:

1) FICO formulas counts balances reported whether or not you Pay In Full (PIF). You may be paying in full but allowing higher balances to report in this holiday season. You could pay before the statement date cuts to lessen this effect.

2) You might be allowing more cards to report a balance (even if your overall debt remains low) the fact that you are using more cards is a negative on the FICO formulas. If you can, pay off some cards before the statement date so they have zero balances.'

3) You are using cards you normally don't use. For some reason FICO gives a slight ding if you use a card that hasn't been used in say 4-6 months. The ding goes down the next month but if you have been using an inactive card each month, rotating cards you haven't used in awhile you could be carrying this ding from month to month. I recommend you rotate cards that report balances and let a card be used once every 3 months to avoid this type of penalty.

Goodluck!