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Hello and welcome to the Nerd Wallet Smart Money Podcast, where we answer your money questions

in 15 minutes or less. I'm your host, Sean Piles. And I'm Liz Weston. As always, be sure to send us

your money questions. Call or text us at 901-730-6373. That's 901-730 Nerd. Or write us or send us your voice memos to podcast at nerdwollet.com to be featured on a future episode.

Let's get to this episode's question from Kirsten.

Kirsten says, my TransUnion credit score dropped 16 points.

My experience score dropped 18 points and my Equifax score dropped 20 points.

I don't understand why.

There are no new accounts, there are no new inquiries, there are no late payments.

My credit usage went down from 6% to 3%, and one of my cards increased my credit line by $10,000.

All of these are good things that are supposed to help my score, so I don't understand why my

score's dropped so drastically. Any ideas?

Well, unexplained credit score drops could be so frustrating. There isn't always a clear

answer, unfortunately, but sometimes there are enough

clues that we can figure out what's happening, and I think that might be the case here.

Yeah, credit scores are definitely a black box in the personal finance world, and that can make

navigating them really tricky. There are just so many factors that can impact your score

at any given moment, so that it's always a bit of a mystery

...