couple questions..looking for help

[Anonymous]

looking for some help with this, any input would be appreciated.

long story short i did alot of harm to my credit in a short amount of time. had a fiance who took me to the cleaners and destroyed it.

got a car repoed, couple small credit cards, 2 bank accounts all charged off.

the amounts of the charge offs arents huge but more then easily manageable

about 2k owed on the car note, 2k on a credit card, couple hundred on the bank accounts.

my credit score currently is about 549 or so from all 3.

now my questions to you guys is what do i do? im in a position where if i take the settlements at 70% i could pay them all fairly quickly within a month or two. is this a bad idea? i did take a settlement on one small one which they reflected as paid in full. obviously i want it all to reflect the best way as possible. i know anything is better as delinquent/collections. just not sure what is the best course of action here. i have no open credit..everything i currently have on my report is collections/charge offs minus a student loan which is being paid.

also would like to know how paying these accounts would reflect on my credit score, im looking to buy a new car and need atleast a 600. all the information on my report is correct as far as i can tell and its damn near impossible to get any kind of credit to fix my credit. =(

any input would be greatly appreciated, thanks guys.

[chasmith]

Paid collections, even paid in full, show as delinquencies and since these are recent will do harm for a while to your scores.  Since you're objective is to get a car, the repo will hurt - especially with lenders who use the auto enhanced score.

You say you have a total problem of about $4,500.  Is there any way to reinstate the car loan and redeem the car?  If it's been sold by the lender have they notified you of a deficiency?  2K seems small for consequence of a repo.

I would prioritize the bank accounts first as they will hurt you if you need a new account, or want to open a CU account. 

See if you can work something out with the 2K credit card - if you pay it off would they reinstate it?

Then try to PFD the small collection items.  On larger ones you can try to negotiate settlements but ask for a non-disclosure, meaning they cannot confirm anything about the account to the CRA.  Get any agreements in writing.

[Anonymous]

these accounts are all bording on being under sol. mostly about 5 years old or so. i would just wait for them to fall off but needing a car kinda screws me there. i just recently decided to fix it all. the car was repoed and auctioned off leaving a balance of about 2200. the credit card was with bank of america from around 2002 when it was opened but didnt go into collection until around 04/05. will paying these without having them removed completely impact my report negativly? or will it look better then just deliquent?

 i just found the pfd example and will try to send that out today to all the companys and see if anyone bites, would it be worth it to send them to the larger ones? the car note and the credit card? they both have said they would selttle for 70% of the debt which sounds great $$$ wise.

[RobertEG]

Can you provide some clarifcation, pleas?.  You use the term charge-offs, which implies they are OC charge-offs that have not been placed into collection. Is that the situation?

If so, then I dont think there is one simple answer. Avoiding a future CA can be just as important as deleting the existing CO. A PIF may not result in immediate deletion of the existing OC, but it will settle the debt, and thus avoid a potential CA.