Why would decreasing my balance on my CC decrease my credit score?

[Anonymous]

Riddle me this peeps.

So I'm going through my credit secure (AMEX) account, my credit is fine = 745. I'm going thru the scenario worksheet of potential what-if's. My actual credit card balance totals a shoddy $12,413. When I select in the drop down menu a new potential balance from the current $10,000 - $12,999 range to having a balance in the $7,000 - $9,999, credit secure says it would drop my score 13 points ~ 732.

If I get the balance down to the $4K - $6,999 range, it would drop 3 points to 742.

What the hell is up with that?

[Anonymous]

I hear you, op. I got advice on here last year that a quick way to increase my credit score was to ask my credit cards to increase my credit limit. The reasoning was that my credit limit pn the card i used the most was $8k and every month I was using $4k of it. I paid it off every month. The person who responded to me said that since I was using about 50% of the credit, it pushed down my credit score. Seemingly, the bank didn't trust me enough to increase my credit as I was coming close to maxing it at times. So I asked the bank to increase it to $20k. Honestly, I haven't checked to see if my score has gone up. But thought I would share what was told to me.

[Anonymous]

It doesn't make sense. There is no scenario in which your score would drop with a decreased balance, assuming every else stays the same. Disregard it.

[Anonymous]

You're supposed to have access to a lot of credit, not a high balance.... We have high card limits but zero balance. Credit is around 780-800 (depending on which of the 3 scorers you use). We have perfect payment history (good), but not a ton of equity in our house (bad).

[Anonymous]

ITs all about ratios of use the more credit you have the less avaliable credit that you use , and the score goes up.