I've been lurking the forums for a while, but I'm still relatively new to the whole credit and travel scene. While I feel like I have a pretty decent understanding of managing my credit, keeping an eye on my credit score recently caused me to doubt myself and I figured I would ask for some advice.

I don't have that long of a credit history, so that may be more volatile and large fluctuations maybe result because of that reason alone.

Ever since Amex started providing a FICO score, I've watched it and my most recent score went from 741 to 727 in a month. I haven't applied for a new card since I last picked up a Amex PRG in July and I haven't knowingly did anything that would perform a credit check. The only other regular payments I have are my car payment and my student load payment which I pay monthly but I don't actually have anything due until December.

I don't know if its a coincidence or not, but I have a BoA Travel Rewards Credit Card that I opened earlier this year before I went on international trip to avoid foreign exchange fees. I don't use it too much since I doesn't offer me the points I'm trying to collect for my long term goal, but for some reason I acquired a credit on the card. I've used it little by little, but I still haven't used it all and I've just noticed that BoA has been marking my bills as unpaid, despite me not owing anything. I spoke to a representative about it and was told that I was fine, but it seems to have lined up with my dropping credit score. I pulled my free credit report back in February, but does anyone think its worth the $12.00 x 3 bucks to get a more in depth look into this? It could be from other reasons but perhaps someone else has experience with this. I'm leaning towards paying for a credit report to make sure there isn't any fraud happening, but I might just be freaking myself out.

On a side note, something else I do is I typically pay off the majority of my balance before my statement closes, or gradually as I go throughout the month to help prevent myself from spending past my means. Sometimes the statement balance is also negative. Is this a bad behavior, credit score wise?