I am assuming you are in Alabama (War Eagle btw).
The Alabama SOL on credit card (open accounts) is in dispute with some argueing 3 years and some argueing 6 years. Additionally, because you own a home, the collection guys can see this and sue and attach liens to your house. So given the size of the balances, you may need to be ready to do some hard negotiating, possibly even lawyering up. You also may not want to poke the bear until at least the 3 years are up. If they are callling now, then see what you can negotiate. The one's that will work with you, make sure you get in writing what they will accept, get a PFD and Never Never Never pay them with a check from your checking account. ONLY use money orders (walmart is cheap and you can buy with your debit card). The one's that won't negotiate put on the back burner. Also one strategy is to take one person's report and clean that one up first. I did that with ours. My wife's score lagged mine for about a year, but she has caught up and will likely pass me this year.
If you can get a plan where everything is paid within 2 years, you maintain low utilization on the existing cards and all the collections disappear because of the PFD, you will see a high 600 score. A 700 is not out of the realm of possibility.
@Anonymous wrote:
I’m a total newbie and I need some major advice on where to start rebuilding. Long story short, my husband was self employed in the logging industry bringing home anywhere from $6000-$7000 per month. As countless other Americans can attest, things turned for the worst and we had a very bad few years and got behind on everything..credit cards are in collection, and house payment is reporting late right now, but I am in the process of getting that caught up. I have more credit cards in collection on my report, but my husband also has the late mortgage reporting on his and a few late auto payments. According to his Discover card statement, his FICO is 500. I have no idea what mine is, but on Credit Karma, which I know is probably completely unreliable, mine is reporting at 514. We do have several loans from years past that were paid off satisfactorily, never a payment missed, before we fell on hard times but from what I see those will not be of any significance. The auto loan that is reporting late is not on my credit, but the other loans that were paid off on time are. We are now in a position to start making things right. The only things reported as open on my husband's credit right now is our mortgage($1495 per month), auto loan ($515 per month), Discover card ($1,587 balance), Chase card ($650 balance) and Fingerhut ($385 balance). The three revolving accounts are close to maxed and I'm working on paying those off as well. The mortgage and revolving accounts (other than Fingerhut) are reporting on mine, and that is all. We have probably close to $25,000 in collection accounts, due to having to live off of credit cards for awhile. Not all are reporting on both reports, and they are all scheduled to fall off early to mid 2019. How long does it take until they don’t matter so much anymore? The date of last payment on most is early to mid 2012.
I know my first order of business is to pay down the revolving credit and catch up the house and auto accounts. After I do that should I work on getting the old collection accounts paid, or will that make a difference to my score? Would adding more revolving credit raise my score faster?
Now that we’re back on more even footing, I really want to get my credit back in control. Any advice y’all could give would be very much appreciated!
