It’s going great! Today, my Synchrony Home cars reported as paid off. The balance was $2,300 out of $2,500 available. On Experian, there was no change in the score, but TU went to 669! I also paid off 2 other open cards that were maxed out (Merrick and Target), so I’m excited to see what those do to my scores in the next few weeks.
UPDATE: I have recently been dealing with a lawsuit from Bank of America over a charged-off credit card balance. I hired a lawyer and did all the right stuff. Ultimately, I settled the full balance on the account ($7,358) for 50%. I just sent them the money, so my credit reports should update with settlement/$0 balance in the next few weeks. I am particularly excited to see what happens to my TU score, because BofA is only one of two remaining negative items reporting. The other is a USAA cc, which is showing as settled and paid. My other reports show all my negative accounts, which is why my scores there are 30-50 points lower. I do wonder if FICO penalizes us more for having any past due balances reporting at all or if the number if negative accounts is more of a factor. For me, 4 more negative accounts is costing the 30-50 points, but I also have a lot of positive stuff and current accounts showing.
In the meantime, I have also settled my husband's charged-off Chase credit card account. We had largely been avoiding settling any of his stuff until we finished mine, as to not get any of the collectors watching his credit report excited about our finances improving until we were ready to start settling, but we decided to go ahead and do this one because it was an amazing offer. His original balance was about $7,000 and we settled it for $700! Not only that, but we were able to pay the $700 settlement in 3 installments. We do have a few more accounts to settle in his name, but this is a really good start and keeps me optimistic for the remaining ones he has, which are USAA cc, Best Buy CC, and several personal loans.
UPDATE: This month has just been tremendous in terms of my credit journey. Not only did I settle my Bank of America CO and my husband's Chase CO, but I also was able to refinance my car! I just recently checked Capital One's refinance page (they do a soft pull to see if you qualify) and they came back with a rate of 10%! I had purchased a car through Carvana back in July at an eye-watering 17%, which was manageable, but not ideal. Since then, I've been looking into the refinancing. I was turned down by RBFCU, where I bank, which I thought was pretty silly because I have had multiple credit products and auto loans with them in the past few years that I always paid in full and on time. They can also see my direct deposits, so they are on my sh*t list for now. Anyway, the Cap1 refinance lowered my car payment by $90 per month (from $545 to $455). 10% isn't a great rate, but it cuts the interest in half over the Carvana/Bridgecrest loan over the life of the loan.
My plan now is to pay off all my current credit cards, then this car, and then I can finally get around to annihilating my student loan debt (which is about $38k). Obviously, I am paying the high interest rate stuff long before my student loans, which are sitting at about 4%. During this time, I may settle more debts, but only if I can afford to and need to (i.e. good settlement offers or lawsuits). We are waiting out the SOL here on a lot of our old CO debts, because there is no way we could afford to settle all of them. We have about a year and a half until we hit what I call the "safe date" on those bad debts.