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Can we talk about that moment I caught my own credit repair mistake
I was working on raising my score to qualify for a house in Raleigh, and I kept paying off old collections in full thinking that was the fast track to a clean report. Then a loan officer named Mike flat out told me that paying them off sometimes resets the activity date and actually hurts your score short term, which explained why I dropped 40 points after settling a $500 medical bill from 2018. Has anyone else gotten tripped up by that pay-to-delete myth or found a better way to handle old debts without tanking your progress?
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patricia324d ago
Hear me out on this but I’ve actually had good luck paying off old collections in full. Your mileage may vary, but I think a lot depends on the credit scoring model and how recent the debt is. For me, the paid mark stuck and my score started climbing after a few months even though it dipped at first.
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the_sean4d agoTop Commenter
Patricia, I appreciate you sharing that experience because it lines up with what I've seen for some people too. When you said "how recent the debt is," that really hits on something important. I've noticed that older accounts from 5 or 6 years ago seem to respond better to paying in full compared to something that's only a year old. The timing of the update matters a lot too - if the debt is about to fall off your report anyway, paying it can sometimes reset the clock and hurt more than it helps. But for debts that are still within their reporting window, a paid mark does seem to carry more weight with newer scoring models than a lot of folks give it credit for.
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young.michael4d ago
Didn't it tank your score again when they updated the date of last activity though?
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