5 Credit Cards Closed, Still With Original Creditor... Do I Pay?

[Anonymous]

Hi there,

Thanks for taking the time to take a look at my post.

I had 5 credit cards that were all closed due to non payment. Had an emergency situation which really messed me up financially. 

Anyways I am hoping to get some advice as to whether I should pay off these closed credit card accounts in full. The collective balance is about $10k. I believe they are still owned by the original creditors since they were closed very recently. 

How should I go about paying these off? Should I wait for them to get handed to collections and then settle with the collections agencies or pay the creditors directly? I assume that it will be better for my credit report to have them paid in full and prevent them from going into collections.

Really appreciate any advice. Thanks

[Anonymous]

How ong were you behind?  You are usually better off dealing with the oc than a collection agency.  I don't whether its an urban myth but I heard if you could bring the paymnets up to date they will stay closed but atleast let you pay the oc and not report a charge off.   Collection agents and jdb are not your friend. It usually tkes 6 months or so before its hits JDB   I would contact the creditor and be proactive and explain what happened. If they did JDB then its a new game. 

[Anonymous]

I was in a similar situation back in 2008 when the economy sucked.  I guess the first question is do you have the 10 grand?  If you have the money I would call the origional creditor and pay them.  My guess is like most of us you don't have 10 grand sitting around.  If thats the case one option is to call the credit card companies and tell them you want to work with them, I ended up doing that with two of my cards which were both with Capital One and since I have started rebuilding they have given me decent cards with good limits.

If your overall situation is terrible bandkruptcy is an option, in reality folks that do that end up having the ability to reset their lives and end up doing better than I did because the derogatiries sit on the report so long.

I think the sooner you make the calls and try to work with them the better off you will be.  Collection agencies are a pain in the ass so if you can avoid them by working with the origional creditor all the better.

You should take a close look at your credit report and solicit advice here or in the rebuilding section, don't ignore the situaiton like I did, my scores would be in the mid 700's if I didn't ignore my situation for several years before I finally took charge of my credit.

Best of luck.  Provide more information and the folks here can help a ton.  It seems that the rebuilding section is where the best information comes out.