Newbie Settling Debt Here

[BlackedOut08r1]

Hey everyone, just wanted to say im happy to join this awesome forum! I have read alot of good stuff on here already!!

So, my story.  I trashed my credit at a young age when the economy was doing great..and then i lost my job and i spent years just running from the debts.

Well i am 26 now and decided i needed to pay it all off, so i pulled my credit report called every creditor on that list and made all settlement offers with them all! (most being at 30%) 

got all the letters in writing stating the agreement so nothing should be able to come back and bite me.

But my question to you all is, these debts have all been verified already (i hired someone) to send out the tons and tons of letters trying to get the bureaus to slip up and of course they did not.

Where do i go from here? 

I am EXTREMELY lucky, my mother opened a card for me when i was a younger kid for a trip to england i went on, and its been open ever since and has never had a bad payment history on it at all. Well we paid it off a year or so ago and it has not been being used. so i am beginning to put like 50 dollars a month on it and just paying it off every month. Is that good enough or should i also get a secured card? My score is around a 550-575. i am looking to buy a house next year and just want this stuff to try and be cleaned up by then. 

[txmomma26]

If it were me, I'd wait on another card for now - just keep doing what you're doing with the one you have.

As for all of the collections, I'd start sending out GWs to see if they can remove from your report.  At the very least, upon manual review, all of the accounts will show paid - which is big when applying for a mortgage.

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@BlackedOut08r1 wrote:

Hey everyone, just wanted to say im happy to join this awesome forum! I have read alot of good stuff on here already!!

So, my story.  I trashed my credit at a young age when the economy was doing great..and then i lost my job and i spent years just running from the debts.

Well i am 26 now and decided i needed to pay it all off, so i pulled my credit report called every creditor on that list and made all settlement offers with them all! (most being at 30%) 

got all the letters in writing stating the agreement so nothing should be able to come back and bite me.

But my question to you all is, these debts have all been verified already (i hired someone) to send out the tons and tons of letters trying to get the bureaus to slip up and of course they did not.

Where do i go from here? 

I am EXTREMELY lucky, my mother opened a card for me when i was a younger kid for a trip to england i went on, and its been open ever since and has never had a bad payment history on it at all. Well we paid it off a year or so ago and it has not been being used. so i am beginning to put like 50 dollars a month on it and just paying it off every month. Is that good enough or should i also get a secured card? My score is around a 550-575. i am looking to buy a house next year and just want this stuff to try and be cleaned up by then. 

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[BlackedOut08r1]

Thank you for the reply, and i just checked my FICO score and it shows 592, so i assume thats not tooooo bad? 

[Shogun]

592 ia pretty low score.  It would be quite difficult to add any new credit with a score that low.  I would take the ball into my own court and start to work.  

    Start with pulling your FREE CR's from (ACR) annualcreditreport.com . they tend to have more info on them, then ones from a 3rd   party.   The CR's from ACR, come directly from each of the CRA's. You can pull 1 Free CR from TU,EQ and EX every 12 months.

   Save your money and Don't Buy the Scores, they are what we call FAKO's.

Once this is done, take the information you get from your reports.  Put them into 2 categories, good and bad.

Now take the ones in the bad category and divide it up to paid and not paid.

Send GWs to all the ones that are paid, and then you will need to work on the unpaid.  Maybe trying for PFDs.  Post a little information on here and we will be glad to help.

[BlackedOut08r1]

I think you might have misunderstood, i have already pulled all my credit reports and have seperated them and have Settled ALL of the accounts. i will begin to make my GW letters, once i get my letters back from them saying the debt is settled. 

Or could already start sending out GW letters ?

@Shogun wrote:

592 ia pretty low score.  It would be quite difficult to add any new credit with a score that low.  I would take the ball into my own court and start to work.  

    Start with pulling your FREE CR's from (ACR) annualcreditreport.com . they tend to have more info on them, then ones from a 3rd   party.   The CR's from ACR, come directly from each of the CRA's. You can pull 1 Free CR from TU,EQ and EX every 12 months.

   Save your money and Don't Buy the Scores, they are what we call FAKO's.

Once this is done, take the information you get from your reports.  Put them into 2 categories, good and bad.

Now take the ones in the bad category and divide it up to paid and not paid.

Send GWs to all the ones that are paid, and then you will need to work on the unpaid.  Maybe trying for PFDs.  Post a little information on here and we will be glad to help.

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[qd]

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@BlackedOut08r1 wrote:

Hey everyone, just wanted to say im happy to join this awesome forum! I have read alot of good stuff on here already!!

So, my story.  I trashed my credit at a young age when the economy was doing great..and then i lost my job and i spent years just running from the debts.

Well i am 26 now and decided i needed to pay it all off, so i pulled my credit report called every creditor on that list and made all settlement offers with them all! (most being at 30%) 

got all the letters in writing stating the agreement so nothing should be able to come back and bite me.

But my question to you all is, these debts have all been verified already (i hired someone) to send out the tons and tons of letters trying to get the bureaus to slip up and of course they did not.

Where do i go from here? 

I am EXTREMELY lucky, my mother opened a card for me when i was a younger kid for a trip to england i went on, and its been open ever since and has never had a bad payment history on it at all. Well we paid it off a year or so ago and it has not been being used. so i am beginning to put like 50 dollars a month on it and just paying it off every month. Is that good enough or should i also get a secured card? My score is around a 550-575. i am looking to buy a house next year and just want this stuff to try and be cleaned up by then. 

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How much time has passed since you paid all the accounts?  I would want to wait to have all those accounts update to CRAs before I tried to app for anything.  I would expect a bump in score from paying down the old debts and would not want to app for anything until I received that bump in my score.  I was in the high 500s and got a capital one rewards card that was not secured a year ago.

[BlackedOut08r1]

So, i have another questoin? Alot of my debts were sold to collection agencies obviously. But the original creditors still are showing up on my credit report. so once i get all my settlement letters stating the balance has been settled do i need to send GW letters to both the original and the collection agencies? 

Also, Capital one is the one that filed a judgement against me, but they did it with the debt being sold to a company call kramer and frank, i have since paid them off and i would like to get the judgement taken off? How could i go about that?