I use one credit card, and it’s for business and other expenses. The monthly cost is around $10,000, and I pay it off in full each month, so I don’t have to worry about interest. I usually check my credit score with Wells Fargo, and recently, it dropped by a whopping 47 points!
What am I doing wrong?
Use a burner email and/or Google voice number to sign up for the free versions of credit karma (where the scores are always wrong/low), as well as the free versions of the Fico and Experian app.
Your bank and credit card company should also give you free access to one of your scores.
Something is definitely not right if you drop 47 points and you’re not aware of why.
Before you pay it off in full, the balance of that monthly statement may get to close to your credit limit and got reported that way. Try to payoff your credit card before the statement closed and see if that affect your score.
My score usually drop when I used to take those 0% interest credit balance offer and goes right back up when I paid them off. My mortgage broker always told me to pay some of my cc before the statement close to show lower balance on statement when my mortgage application goes to underwriting.
3 Likes
2 Likes
Credit karma if you just want to see the updates. MyFico website if you want/need real scores.
My wife was recently a victim of identity theft even with frozen credit. Her score dropped by a similar amount. All good now after sticking the lawyers on them, but you might have a similar thing occurring.
wow. How does that happen with a freeze ?
1 Like
Experian has the most accurate score, and I think you can sign up for $1 for first month and get realtime reports only for Experian
Experian scores are always FICO and it has Auto Credit Card and Mortgage Fico scores as well
Amex and discover also gives fico; so does PenFed but their fico model is different
Sneaky SOB’s these days. They applied for utilities and cell phone contracts, which generally use a different credit system.
NCTUE is the place you have to go to freeze that credit system, which I was unaware of until it happened. Utilities and phone carriers tend to use that system because it’s cheaper.
In the case of my wife, she had collections for a few Texas utility companies.
2 Likes
If you’d gone from 0 derogatories (like late payments) to 1 , the damage would be greater than 47 points on any score model.
(If you already had 1+ derogatory and added another, that could be a different story)
How many credit cards do you have, and do you have more cards than usual reporting balances? One or more reporting closer to the limit than normal?
Go get your credit reports directly from the bureaus, and look for anything unusual.
Note that WF gives a FICO 9, which isn’t broadly used and is basically a credit participation trophy, so I’d check the more commonly used FICO scores (FICO 8 is my bellwether) to see if there’s a similar type of impact.
Credit Karma is garbage, as the scores are worthless and the underlying bureau data is routinely erroneously interpreted and presented.
5 Likes
Thanks for sharing this information. Will help a lot of folks !
1 Like
I’ve never had a late payment, and I only have four credit cards, but I only use one. I always make sure to pay off the balance in full each month to avoid interest charges. Usually, my credit score goes up and down a bit each month, but this is the first time it’s dropped so drastically.
If you don’t use the other three cards then one (or more) of those card issuers might have closed your account(s). If so, your amount of available credit could go down and by a lot if you had a large limit on any closed card.
Issuer closures like that and the smaller limit of available credit could do it @ a 47 point drop.