Why is my credit score not rising?

Money Management
1

I am confused, I took out a secured credit card and paid off my debt, however, my credit score is tanking instead of rising.

What am I doing wrong? I only use 20-30% of my credit card limit and pay it off monthly. Any suggestions would be greatly appreciated! Thanks

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2

I would guess that there is something else going on other than the credit card. Have you checked your credit report, not just the score? Have there been some inquiries? Did you make a large purchase like a vehicle? Maybe the debt you paid off has not yet reported it to the credit companies? I would do a thorough check to be sure that no one else is using your info, or if there is an error.

3

The debt has been recorded and applied to my credit report. I check my credit report weekly. I have not made any purchases and have my credit report frozen. Seems like every time I pay my secured credit card my score drops.

4

I am not familiar with this but now that I know I will research. Meanwhile, could it be because you froze your report and might be preventing it from updating?

5

Wen Dee posted:

I am confused, I took out a secured credit card and paid off my debt, however, my credit score is tanking instead of rising.

What am I doing wrong? I only use 20-30% of my credit card limit and pay it off monthly. Any suggestions would be greatly appreciated! Thanks

I believe you are doing it right but there must be something wrong. Just focus on minimizing your credit utilization to a 10% instead of 30% for a few months and avoid closing any open credit cards. I have a credit score of 785 and only two credit cards but it took sometime before I was able to achieve this.

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6

You said you took a Secured Credit Card and paid off your debt. Two Questions for you. 1. After you paid off that debt, did you close the accounts out? If you did, then your score dropped because 10 to 15% of your credit score is based on the age of your credit cards and other reporting trade lines. So if your Secured Credit card is less than 2 years old and you closed out credit cards that you had for our 4 years, there is the answer to your question.

  1. If you got a secured card, they you had to put up cash to get that card, why not just use that cash to pay off your debt and keep at least 2 credit cards open that have a good payment history and that you have had for several years?