How to recover my credit after several 30 late payments?

[Ellen]

I got behind on some credit cards payments on-and-off, and now it’s on my credit report. I don’t want to mess up my credit, so my question is what’s best – Pay everything off immediately or pay it off slowly to get my score back up?

[Stacy Wall]

You MUST pay off immediately, but that won’t raise your score

You need to get current. Any additional 30 days that pass without you getting current will result in another late payment reported to the credit bureaus, and a further decline in your credit score.

If you approach the 150 days late mark, you risk getting your account charged-off, which can be a death sentence to your credit score, not to mention that you will loose your credit card.

Getting current won’t erase the negative effect of your late payments. Unfortunately, the damage has been done and cannot be erased. You can only avoid further damage.

Accurate information remains on your credit report for 7-1/2 years before aging off. It will bear on your credit score for the next two years, and after that its affect will diminish with time. By the time it falls off your report it will hardly affect your score.

The only thing you can do to raise your score is re-establish good credit, which basically means paying off your debts on time, for a long period of time. It will take you 2 – 4 years to get your score back to where it was before.

See how-to-build-your-credit.html for a list of credit building do’s & Don’ts.

Good luck

[Author]

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