Let me begin by saying I was young and stupid and should have never opened these high interest credit cards. That lesson was learned the hard way. I am in the process of repairing my credit. I went to get an auto loan and I figured, I make pretty decent money somebody will approve me with a decent rate. Boy was I wrong. 23% interest rate on an auto loan. I think not.
Currenrly I have a Credit Union Secured credit card for $2750 in good standing that needs to be paid off its maxed out it will be a year old in march... A capital one secured master card for 600$ thats paid off opened in september 2022. A self Lender secured Credit card for $550 that is 50% used opened in april 2021. A small personal loan through my local credit union in good standingwith less than 500$ owed on it. i make the payments on time to get the positive payment history reported. I pay my rent on time every month ($1530) and that is reported to the 3 majors monthly as well. My worry is what you'll see below. How long will it take me to recover from all the charge offs? They all pretty much charged off at the end of 2021 and the beginning of 2022. Besides paying them off, what other advice can I get to help me look good in the eyes of financial institutions again? Equifax Tells me my score is a 580 on their direct website. Transunion says the 580. I can not pull experian without paying for it. My FICO says 468
Im just looking for some guidance is all.
This is the progress I've made so far:
Credit Collection Services $318 paid in full (old apartment)
LVNV(credit one bank Charge off) settled for 443$
LVNV (Affirm) settled for $700
FingerHut Charge off Paid in full $550
Spring Oaks Capital (Bank of Missouri Destiny Mastercard Charge off) settled for $600
Spring Oaks Capital (Bank of Missouri Indigo Master Card Charge off) Settled for $585
Central Portfolio Control (Fortiva/Aspire Mastercard Charge off) Paid in full $804
Here is what I have left:
Milestone Master Card Charge off $719
xFinity Mobile Credit Collection Services $1900
Applied Bank Charge Off $656
Bank of Missouri FIT Mastercard Charge off $732
Commenity Bank Ulta Master Card $3358
FB Opp Loans $2563
How many of them are charge offs reporting a balance every month, and counting against your revolving utilization?
Those will be a double whammy on your credit report, as they count against both your payment history, and credit utilization, which combined make up 65% of your score.
Those are the ones you should try negotiating with the lender first, ideally getting them to remove the account from your credit report completely, but at the very least, settling the debt will make it stop reporting a balance and stop wrecking your utilization.
Having a history of late payments hurts, but not nearly as much as an active CO reporting, or a collection account.
If any of them have gone to collections, and sold off to a debt collection company, it may be easier to settle for substantially less, since they paid pennies on the dollar, and are easier to get a PFD (pay for delete) with.
Collections and charge offs both hurt your score really bad, but the effect of collections fades more over time, where an actively reporting charge off continuously supresses your score for the full 7 years.
I'm afraid there is no quick fix for this. I had an injury I was not adiquately insured for mid 2015, and was only able to work in a limited capacity for the better part of a year, and I stupidly didn't do a BK.
Ended up in credit jail for most of the time since then, and only started to get out in the past year or so as things aged, then started falling off my report in the past 3 months.
I defaulted on a lot more debt than what you did though, had 3 lawsuites from debt collectors, etc..
I'm much better insured now!
So, while @Thornton123 is on the right track about always trying to negotiate a PFD prior to paying, that usually only works with collection agencies (CAs), not original creditors (OCs) as you found out.
Unfortunately all you can really do is pay/settle all of your remaining charge offs and just let time do its thing. They'll all fall off eventually at about the 7 year mark from DOFD (Date of First Delinquency, or when the account first went delinquent and never became current again, aka first missed payment that led to charge off).
468 sounds accurate for multiple charge offs unfortunately. BTW, Equifax offers some proprietary score that isn't used by major lenders, and TransUnion offers Vantage 3.0 scores which also isn't used by major lenders, so you can pretty much ignore both of their scores.
May I ask how you got so many charge offs if you make pretty good money? Were they acquired prior to getting this job? Not looking to judge, simply to understand.
