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Information about credit rating and paying off credit card debt - The Bills.com Blog
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Information about credit rating and paying off credit card debt
Question: My credit score is 542 and i have 2 deliquent credit cards will paying these off raise my score enought to get me out of the very high risk category?
Answer: First, I?ll give a short discussion of the ?score? that you are concerned about. I will assume that your reference to your credit score means your FICO score. The FICO (Fair Issac Corporation) score is the mostwidely used and is said to be the most comprehensively derived score. That means that more relevant factors are used to make the score more reliable than others. Also, other score methods are usually weighted to result in a number close to the FICO number. A FICO score generally ranges from 300 to 850. The US median score is around 725. Generally, 660 is regarded as potentially sub-prime and represents an important break point for credit worthiness. So, your first goal will be to get your score up to, or hopefully, above 660.
If the accounts are not too far behind you could call each creditor, offer to bring the accounts current by paying the arrearages, and ask the creditors to ?reage? the accounts (if you haven?t asked
the account to be ?reaged? within the past 12 months). Then you will make all future payments (at least the minimum payment) to be RECEIVED by the creditor on or before the due date. The combination of the reageing and current payments should convert these two items from a drag on your score to a positive influence within about 6 months. Keep in mind I do not know anything else about the reasons for your credit score; there are too many factors that go into credit scoring for me to tell you whether or not bringing these two accounts current will bring you out of the high-risk category.
Since you are asking about credit updates, you might also be interested in how your credit score is calculated. Your credit rating is calculated
based on several variables, including: your payment history (do you have any late payments, charge-offs, etc.), the amount and type of debt that you owe, if you have maxed out any of your trade lines, and then several other secondary factors like the length of your credit history and how many recent inquiries have been made to look at your credit history. Paying off delinquent or maxed out trade-lines will almost always help your credit score.
If you would like more information, please visit our credit resource page at:
http://www.bills.com/credit/
We hope that this helped you to Find, Learn, and Save!
Best,
Bill
www.bills.com
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