Credit Reports and items to pay

[jdman]

I am trying to clean up my credit report along with my wife's. Is there a general rule as to what to pay and what to not pay? We both have a lot of medical bills on our reports. Her credit report total is under $10K owed for all 3 bureaus. Mine is far worse at $41k(over 20K is from 2 repos I got from losing my job). 

 

Any advice on paying vs. not paying? Also need advice on the 2 repo balances on my credit. How do you handle this? Should I file Chapter 7 bankruptcy? 

 

Just lost and dont know where to turn first. 

[TomnTex]

Sounds like BK is your best and painless route. Good luck.

[fisthardcheese]

There is no real answer here.  It will all depend on how long you wish to work on it, what kind of debt each account is, what status they are currently in and how old they are.  The repos may be tough. I've never really dealt with that, so I'm not sure how difficult they are to deal with.

 

All I can tell you is that between my wife and I, we had about $15k of debt being reported between the 2 of us just about 3 years ago and scores down in the 500's for both of us.  Over those 3 years, I worked to clean our reports. I paid exactly $0 to all creditors, and collected roughly $8k from settlements, not including amounts used to offset or collected by a couple attorneys who helped me.  I used that $8k saved over the 3 years as a down payment on a new house about 5 months ago once our scores were up near 700.

 

Not everyone can clean up everything on their reports by paying $0, because, as I said, it will depend on the type of debts.  Mine was all medical and credit cards.  And it helped that some of those OCs liked using collection agents who repeatedly enjoyed violating TCPA, FDCPA and FCRA laws.

[chocolate]

What do you mean you paid $ 0 and collected $ 8k  settlement?

From where you got the $8k  and how?

Are the collection still on your reports?

Thanks

[shellieh98]

What do you mean you paid $ 0 and collected $ 8k  settlement?

From where you got the $8k  and how?

Are the collection still on your reports?

Thanks

He means he paid those creditors reporting on his credit report 0 dollars, and he collected 8 thousand dollars from them by either suing them, or telling them he was going to sue them for violations of the FDCPA, FCRA, TCPA. you would need to study up and find if they violate your rights, then hit them with a lawsuit.

[121xGigawatts]

From my own experience, BK sounds like it might be the way to go.  I fell on hard times in 2009, over 90k in debt, job changed and lost a substantial portion of my income.  I have since paid, either because of judgments or just trying to clean up my report everything except two charge offs, both fall off this year.  My score has moved exactly 100 points and I still do not qualify for a mortgage.  I have paid back over 70k of the debt, have lived with bad credit for 7 years anyway, and have nothing to show for my efforts.  If I had just declared BK, I would probably be typing this from my own home.   

[1stStep]

If you paid, but did not negotiate a removal, then that is where you made your mistake.

 

If you pay, get a written agreement that any negative TLs will be removed from your credit report. And never, never pay full price.

[fisthardcheese]

On 1/12/2016 at 11:05 PM, 121xGigawatts said:

From my own experience, BK sounds like it might be the way to go.  I fell on hard times in 2009, over 90k in debt, job changed and lost a substantial portion of my income.  I have since paid, either because of judgments or just trying to clean up my report everything except two charge offs, both fall off this year.  My score has moved exactly 100 points and I still do not qualify for a mortgage.  I have paid back over 70k of the debt, have lived with bad credit for 7 years anyway, and have nothing to show for my efforts.  If I had just declared BK, I would probably be typing this from my own home.   

This is exactly what happens when you attempt to "do the right thing" by making payment arrangements and other "deals" to pay off serisouly defaulted debts.  Yes, BK would have solved it quicker, but my preferred method would have been to use a combination of arbitration and lawsuits to wipe out as much as I could and collect some settlements to maybe pay off some others.