Credit score suddenly dropped

[BlondeSpiders]

Hi folks, I'm hoping you have some advice for me.

I get a monthly email from Intuit with my credit score rating. After watching it steadily climb every year (after many, many bad decisions in my 30s!) I suddenly saw my score drop 24 points in a month. Now it's under 700 and I'm freaking out.

I pulled credit reports from all 3 bureaus and can't see anything that would raise a red flag. We've had our locking mailbox burgled more times than I can count, so I've been vigilant about checking for fraudulent accounts. There are no new accounts reported, and the only potential hazard I see is Experian reporting my last late payment (only 30 days late, not in arrears or anything) in 2015.

After several years of full time school and only summer jobs, my debt to income ration was like 100%. I've been working full time for 6 months, so that's gone way down. I can't figure out why it would take such a dive now.

My question is, who would I contact about this? My bank? Intuit? The credit bureaus? I don't know how to fix this, if it even is fixable.

TIA for your advice.

[trissie18]

There was talk earlier in the year that the formulas for determining credit scores may be changing. Here is a link to an article with a little more information. Not sure if it's the reason but may be related.


www.nytimes.com/2020/01/25/business/credit-score-fico-change.html

[winecat]

Mine has been going up and down about 20 points since the beginning of the year. Nothing has changed; no late payments, similar usage, etc.. You're not alone.

[ellipses84]

Debt to available credit ratio makes a big difference. Sometimes credit card companies lower your max or close a card you haven’t used in a while without telling you. You can request a credit line increase on a card to get it higher. Length of credit history matters as well, so if one of your oldest accounts was closed that could impact it. If you don’t have a lot of credit cards and use them for bills you pay monthly, but your credit monitoring check happened before they were paid off, that could potentially cause a swing.

I really wish they weren’t implementing the credit score changes this summer considering the financial implications of Covid. People who are already struggling don’t need their scores to drop more causing them to pay more interest on loans. That being said, I haven’t noticed any change yet for DH or I, and I didn’t think they were implementing it until late summer.

[madringal]

Paying down debt can actually lower your credit score. Often as people pay things off, their credit score begins to drop.

[BlondeSpiders]

Thanks for your thoughts, everyone!

[macmars45]

Last May all the appliances in our house died at the same time. So H and I bought 6 appliances in a month. It was awesome. /sarcasm
Anyways, we put it on a credit card and as soon as we paid it all off (that same billing cycle), our credit took a big hit. We used the credit card how you're 'supposed' to (by paying the entire thing off every month) so I was displeased with that result.