@Anonymous wrote:
Hello,
I have been working on my credit score for the past 18 months and have went from 520 to 670 over that time period. I removed my student loans from default, paid off a defaulted car loan, signed up for 3 credit cards, had my husband add me as an autorized user on all of his cards, and purchased a new car with a cosigner in that time period.
Now my problem is, I have one negative balance holding my score back from really jumping up. It is a Medical bill from June of 2014 for $750 dollars. I have never received any documents from the credit agency that holds this debt and I have never tried to contact them.
Should I reach out and try to do a pay to delete, dispute the charge, or just wait until it falls off on its own after 7 years which would be next June? Any advice is appreciated.
i have the less popular opinion here, just because I have many derogatories that are very old and trying to prioritize.
If it falls off in 1 year, I would wait it out. You have already waited 6 years. I would only do this if you have no intentions of using your credit any further until then. I would also look into EE and implement it when the time comes.
I would pull all 3 CRs from annual credit report for free (no scores, but to pull weekly through 4/2021). I suggest them because they are very comprehensive and have specific dates to guide you in implementing EE.
TU will have listed "estimated date of removal". You can request EE exactly 6 months before thay date, on the 1st of the month, even. My SO did this for 8 accounts on 6/1/2020 with an "estimated date of removal" of 12/2020 amd it was near instantaneous!
EX will have listed "on record until". They have 3 month EE, but the date given is a bit off becuase they already bake 2 month into it. Meaning, you can request EE exactly 1 month prior to that date listed (making it 3 months prior to when it should naturally fall off).
EQ will have listed "date of first delinquency". Add 7 years to that date and that is when it is due to naturally fall off. EQ has 1 month EE, but they are notorious for messing this up, so I would let it be and let it fall of naturally. Many have reported that the TLs fall off before the are slated to anyway (1-4 months early reported recently), but of course there is no guarantee.
Again, this is my personal opinion. If you have a big app coming up and 10-11 months is too long to wait out for EQ to finally drop it, I would try the methods listed above by @gdale6 . You did not mention this, but is it reporting to all 3Bs?
Whatever you do, absolutely avoid disputing it. That causes so much chaos sometimes for something so simple amd can even ding your scores.
Good luck!
