cancel
Showing results for 
Search instead for 
Did you mean: 

New Here- Tips on paying off Medical Bills

tag
Anonymous
Not applicable

New Here- Tips on paying off Medical Bills

Hello,
I am finally in a position where I can start to pay off my debts. I currently have paid off $10,000 in credit in the last 4 months and am now focusing on my mammoth medical bills. Most of which are collection accounts. How do you suggest we pay these and attempt to still hopefully increase our scores. Do I pay the big ones off first, pay a little to everyone, take some of the "settlement offers". Do settlement offers help or hurt the score?
 I also want to be able to view my score often to see how I am doing and to make sure all the right stuff is being reported. Do these sites that require a monthly fee to view your score work, are they on the up and up??
 
Thank you.
Message 1 of 4
3 REPLIES 3
Anonymous
Not applicable

Re: New Here- Tips on paying off Medical Bills

search for pay for delete letters (pfd). good job so far, and good luck!
Message 2 of 4
SmartCookie
Valued Contributor

Re: New Here- Tips on paying off Medical Bills

hi redrockrunner and welcome!
 
Please start here:   http://ficoforums.myfico.com/fico/board/message?board.id=ficoscoring&thread.id=2654  and also see the "Frequently Requested Threads" for examples of all letters including the PFDs you will be wanting.
 
The best advice is to read all you can here before you prepare your letters.  Spend at least a week or two learning exactly what will be best... understand state collecting SOL and reporting timeframes.
 
It is ideal for anyone to try to deal with the OC before a CA.  It is also usually easier to do so with a medical collection, and to get a settlement.  Get everything in writing and do not speak with a CA on the phone.  Make sure any PFD to an OC includes that they will also have any involved CA remove any and all derog information regarding the account.
 
Settling as 'settled legally for less than full' will not affect your score any more than paid in full would, but doesn't look so great on a manual review.  With a PFD, it won't matter as all derog info will be removed.  If they don't take the first offer, you just keep trying until they do.
 
The sites that offer score monitoring offer FAKO scores, not FICO (the ones that matter).  They are helpful to keep on top of things, but the alerts are not timely.  A big change in FAKO will let you know that you might want to pull your FICO scores to see what is really going on.  Search the boards on privacymatters.com, they have a very good offer right now if you know how to work it.  There are other monitoring services available and many threads on people's opinions on them.
EQ 787 EX 781 TU 737 11/17/07 *** I am not an attorney. If I was, I might not clip coupons. If you want legal advice, consult an attorney. If you want my personal opinion, feel free to consider my posts***
Message 3 of 4
Anonymous
Not applicable

Re: New Here- Tips on paying off Medical Bills

depending how mammoth your debt is, you may want to talk to a bankruptcy lawyer to wipe it out and start w/ a clean slate.
 
Some tenants of mine rented from me March06. A chemical spill near their house caused them health problems. they filed bankruptcy and got foreclosed on around March06.
 
Sept07, they moved out because they got a new loan to buy a house. They're credit score went up fast, go figure.
Message 4 of 4
Advertiser Disclosure: The offers that appear on this site are from third party advertisers from whom FICO receives compensation.