Credit Repair

How long does it take to repair your credit?

I have begun repairing my credit. I've contacted collection agencies to make settlement agreements and everything but I haven't heard from them and it has been 2 or 3 weeks since i sent out the first letter. I need to raise my score that depleted during my divorce. Is there anything I can do to speed up the process?

Public Comments

1. my husband and i just went thru this last year and you litterally have to be on there as*es all the time. They really don't work on your behalf unless you are paying in full right away but you have to make sure they follow through and they can send you letters showing you cleared the account so your score did not go up but the person who needs it can see this is nolonger on you report just waiting removal. But it took us almost 8 months to get all three major agencies to remove the things that needed to be remove.
2. Repairing credit takes a lot longer than damaging it. For some items it can take as long as seven years to leave your credit report. One thing you can do is go online and find one of those free credit calculators. You are able to enter your specific information to discover whatyou credit score probably is -- then you can mess around with different scenarios to see how different things would impact your credit. It might give you an idea on how to get the best results the quickest.
3. Paying off old debt will not improve your score unless you get the items deleted. The damage has already been done. In fact, paying old debt will make it a current transaction and the negatives will count more in your score. However, creditors look at your whole credit report, not just your score. Paid old debt looks much better than unpaid.
4. It could take up to a month for them to respond. Also if you did not do a pay for delete then it will be another 7 years for the negs to fall if you pay them. You score will start to rise after two years though. Best advice would be to dispute the neg. on your credit report before you pay them. Unless they are going to sue you. Otherwise you are just resetting the deliquency date. You can visit creditboards.com for info and sample letters on how to dispute. Also make sure you don't miss and future payments on credit cards. And open some new accounts if you dont have any revolving credit accounts so you can start building a new and positive credit history. They have credit card just for people like you. YOu can comp;are the rates and fees and apply online at http://creditcardwarehouseonline.com or http://creditcardwarehouse.ecreditdirectory.com/