How To Manage A Bad Credit Report

So you’ve wiped a few creditors from your credit report by following my instructions in How To Fix Your Credit For Free. Great! But it appears you still have some valid blemishes left. So now what? Read on to find out how to manage a bad credit report.

Oh, did you think you were going to fix your credit score without paying something? Ha! It doesn’t quite work that way every time, however, we are able to minimize the pain from creditors who just won’t go away. This is also where it gets a bit complicated because there is no straight road as this may require some phone calls, letters, and frustration and no two creditors are the same. Some creditors can be cooperative because they just want their money back while others can be brutal just to punish you. I recommend handling the creditors in the methods below:

If the “Last Activity” on the debt is near 7 years

On your credit report, every item has a “Last Activity” field which is the date that involved payments but it can also include where you missed a promise to pay. By law, a debt in collections can’t stay on your credit report for more than 7 years and a judgment can’t stay on it for more than 10. After that time, the time period that the creditor can’t come after you over the debt, just expires and is automatically removed from your report based on the “last activity” date.

If the “Last Activity” Date is Near

So if the debt is near the 7 or 10-year mark, you’ve waited this long, so what’s a few more months? Just let the debt expire and it will fall off your report. Now in the common scenario where the debt keeps renewing itself automatically, that’s a discussion for another future post for when collection agencies keep recycling your debt.

If the “last activity” is far off from 7 years

If the “last activity” date is nowhere near the 7 or 10 year mark, then this is where you have to make a choice. There are two options available to you. You can either wait it out until it expires or contact the creditor to make payment arrangements. My suggestion is to wait it out if possible, but if you can’t, then the only option is to pay them. However, with some creditors, you just can’t simply pay them. Weird, I know, but if you don’t know what you’re doing, this is precisely how they will screw you for the next 7 years of your life. Not only do they want to stab you but they also want to turn the knife, so stay tuned to my next post on how to pay off creditors.🦉