Pay For Delete or Leave on for AAoA?

Anonymous · ‎05-04-2018

Two of my oldest accounts are charged off loans (indicated in bold below). I've been making payments on them over the last six months and will be making a final payment on Monday. If I do a pay for delete I will risk lowering my average age of accounts. Of course the alternative is to leave the accounts on my report and have them listed as Paid In Full. These accounts are 5 years old. Most of my other accounts are less than 1 year old which means my AAoA will take a big hit if they are removed. Also, since these accounts are so old, I'm wondering if they will drop off anyway in the next 2 years?

What do you guys think is the best action here?

More credit details, Baddies are starred ***:

Capital One Secured Card - Opened 9/2017 - Paid as agreed - No lates - $600 limit

Discover Secured Card - Opened 9/2017 - Paid agreed - No lates - $200 limit

***Apple Federal Credit Union Loan - Opened 5/2012 - Closed 6/2013 - Charged off as bad debt - $30

Capital One Auto - Opened 3/2018 - Paid as agreed - No lates - $9,802

***Santander Auto - Opened - 7/2012 - Closed 2/2014 - Charged off as bad debt - $10,385

Us Department of Education Student Loan - Opened 9/2014 - Paid as agreed - No lates - $9,160

***Navient Student Loan - Opened 9/2007 - Paid as agreed - 2 lates - $1,578

***Verizon - Opened 4/2015 - Closed 3/2016 - Collection Account - $1247

***Apple Federal Credit Union Loan - Opened 1/2013 - Closed 12/2013 - $108

***Debt Recovery Solutions - Opened 12/2016 - Collection Account - $1,029

Average age of accounts 3 years 1 month

Utilization 26%

Experian 604 Experian 614 Transunion 602

Anonymous · ‎05-04-2018

These two you highlighted. Honestly, I would just pay them as they are only 138.00 combined.

I wonder what would happen at 7 years to these two paid collection accounts. Do they fall off, or do they lose the bad juju but remain as paid, closed accounts? That would be awesome! Perhaps someone more knowledgeable than I can answer that.

gdale6 · ‎05-04-2018

Derog status overrides anything you may get out of AAoA. Payment History is 35% of Fico score, age of accounts is 15%. Settle those COs if they are updating monthly as they are keeping Fico down if they do.

gdale6 · ‎05-04-2018

@Anonymous wrote:
These two you highlighted. Honestly, I would just pay them as they are only 138.00 combined.

I wonder what would happen at 7 years to these two paid collection accounts. Do they fall off, or do they lose the bad juju but remain as paid, closed accounts? That would be awesome! Perhaps someone more knowledgeable than I can answer that.

Once an account becomes a CO its a derog for eternity, it will be removed at the 7 to 7.5 yr mark from the DoFD and no longer impact the OPs report or Fico score.