Fico Score

I'm really confused. I'm fairly young at 23. I have seen how important my credit score is so I have taken steps to make it as good as possible. To start in 01/2002 I got my first credit score from Equifax my fico score was 640. Due to Length of time accounts have been established, Proportion of balances to credit limits on bank/national revolving or other revolving accounts is too high, Too many inquiries last 12 months. So I set out to do my best to clean everything up and keep it that way. So fast forward up to 7/2003 I got all my balances paid of for everything but my car loan which is on 0%. I give it time to all get reported then run my credit report again. Iâ??m extremely thrilled to see it jump up to 734. The only 2 negative factors were length of time of accounts which is kind of out of my control and 2 +30 days late payments on different accounts back in May and August of 2000. The only debit I owed was 108.00 on a credit card which is paid off every month and never over 200 total and my car which at that time was at 18,000. So I see the thread to get a free credit report and figure I will check it again to see what it is at. Well this time it is 683 there are still only the same 2 negative items. I owe nothing on my credit cards and my car loan is down to 16,000. I donâ??t understand what caused my score to drop over 50 points? Iâ??m sorry for the lengthy post Iâ??m just confused about what Iâ??m doing wrong. Thanks for everyoneâ??s help.

Wayne

 

Ok I see is there a certain percent I should keep? Like 2-5% of available credit?

Thanks