Rebuild Me

[Anonymous]

Will paying off old accounts on your credit report help your score any? I have an old water and cable bill that show up and im thinking of making payments but I wanna make sure it will help me more than hurt me. Thx

[FrugalRican]

Paying them off and having them still show up on your reports, will do nothing for you other than having the moral satisfaction of settling the old debt.

What you ultimately want is to have a written agreement from those companies that if you pay whatever amount, that they agree to delete that from your credit report. (The much talked-about PFD -Pay For Deleteion- letters.

If you did just pay them, they'd just go from "Charged-Off" to "Paid" and it wouldn't affect your score.

I'm sure a few other members will chime in with some useful links on how to construct some PFD letters to see if you can get those baddies off of your credit report. Good luck!

[RobertEG]

To add to that, it is not all just about improving your current score.

If the status of the unpaid debt is such that it can escalate to a charge-off, collection, or if still within SOL, a judgment, the old unpaid debt still has the potential for more damage.

And, of course, others reviewing your credit report will not look too favorably on the listing of unpaid bad debt.

FICO score is not the only concern.