topic Re: Charge off timeline in Rebuilding Your Credit

Charge off timeline

D25 — Wed, 20 Aug 2025 18:32:03 GMT

Hello

I am trying to get a idea of when a charge off is going to fall off of my account. A lot of dates are missing in my credit report so I'm trying to pinpoint what date the 7 year period begins. It seems what happened was the account was closed due to non payment in December of 2018. But then it shows a paid as agreed in the summer of 2019. Then it was charged off in the winter of 2019. All the information in between those dates is missing. Would the 7 years begin from the original closure in 2018 or late 2019? I don't remember the exacts from those years but if I had to guess they closed my account and then I tried to pay it off but didn't manage to pay it off so they charged it off eventually. Any information would be appreciated.

Re: Charge off timeline

JoeRockhead — Wed, 20 Aug 2025 20:21:30 GMT

@D25 wrote:
Hello

I am trying to get a idea of when a charge off is going to fall off of my account. A lot of dates are missing in my credit report so I'm trying to pinpoint what date the 7 year period begins. It seems what happened was the account was closed due to non payment in December of 2018. But then it shows a paid as agreed in the summer of 2019. Then it was charged off in the winter of 2019. All the information in between those dates is missing. Would the 7 years begin from the original closure in 2018 or late 2019? I don't remember the exacts from those years but if I had to guess they closed my account and then I tried to pay it off but didn't manage to pay it off so they charged it off eventually. Any information would be appreciated.

The 7 year clock starts based off the DOFD ( date of first default) that led to the charge off status. That would be when the first 30 day late happened and the account was never brought back current. If you haven't already, get all three of your reports from Annual Credit Report and comb those over. They are free every 7 days.

Once you determine your DOFD, you can start planning for EE (early exclusion) requests from the bureaus.

Re: Charge off timeline

Yasselife — Thu, 21 Aug 2025 00:32:30 GMT

@D25

The 7-year timeline doesn’t start from when the account was closed or charged off; it starts from the Date of First Delinquency (DOFD) that led to the charge-off. In other words, the very first missed payment that you never caught up on is what starts the clock.

So if your account first went delinquent in Dec 2018 and you never brought it current after that, the 7 years would run from then; meaning it should drop around Dec 2025. If you did manage to bring it current in 2019 and then went delinquent again later that year, then the new DOFD would be in 2019 and it would fall off around 2026.

Bottom line; look for the DOFD on your credit reports (sometimes hidden in the detailed data) because that’s the date the bureaus use to calculate the fall-off, not the “charge-off” date itself.