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Greetings all! I come to you for opinions and advice on helping to get on the right credit track. Long story short, I fell on hard financial times in late 2019/early 2020 that resulted in me defaulting on several credit cards. Sucks because I had these cards since 2015, but since then they have all gone into collections with one of the accounts actually filing suit. The accounts were:
My current Fico8 score is 569: End of 2022 Goal 650 (might be a stretch lol)
I was able to get approved for new cards to rebuild my credit:
I have a mortgage and car payments as well.
How should i go about with the closed accounts? What are my best strategies to settle these huge balances while also trying to get them deleted and reach my goal. I appreciate any and all information and please let me know if i am missing any information. Thank you very much.
Thank you for your reply! I was thinking the same thing, but i was under the impression i needed to have atleast a 620 credit score in order to refinance. I will be looking into that today i appreciate your advice.
@CYBERSAM wrote:Initially I would say refinance your mortgage, get few bucks to cover all your debt and collection. If you had no late payment on mortgage history then you should be good, given average house market has gone up!
I would be shocked if the OP mortgage scores are currently high enough to refi for a good rate. Doesn't matter if there was no lates on the mortgage itself, scores are what is used to determine eligibility for a specific loan program as well as the interest rate.
You need to temper your expectations of getting the OC accounts removed, it almost never happens that a lender will agree to a pay for delete
@dragontears Thanks for the advise. So my best bet is to settle the accounts and let time take its course?
it looks like you have 4 cards, so you can start practicing AZEO to try and bump your score up, with the goal of a mortgage refi
next up would be settingly the Kay Jewelers acct, as the amount is smaller
ultimately, you just need to keep working each account to get them all down to $0 - hopefully some of them will get deleted off, but even paid to zero gets you moving forward
Good Luck to you!
@RSX Thanks for the advice. I just did some research on the Azeo method so im definately going to start practicing this. I appreciate the help.
I would prioritize Discover, they are extremely litigious and I'm shocked you haven't been served yet.
Contact them and start working on a settlement because if they get a judgement, they will go through with wage garnishment and bank account lien
@Remedios Thank you i was able to get on a payment plan with them. Couldnt settle because the debt is still with them, but it's my debt and im just going to pay it off.
*UPDATE*
I was devastated last week when my score dropped 49 points (Credit Karma TU 567). i had no idea why and then I saw those dreaded words "derogatory account/collections". Its from a Capital One card ($1553) that is now with Midland credit. 2 days later my score went back up 54 points (TU621/FICO 8 602). I was able to 0 out Capital one and Mission lane card, but i still have a balance on the Merrick. I am going to tackle this collection this week, any advice on how to settle with Midland? Are they usually tough to deal with? What amount should i aim to settle with? And do they delete once settlement is reached? Thank you guys for all your help.