Hey how are you? Just a little background on myself before I respond. I work in the real estate industry so I work with banks closely every single day originating mortgages for my customers who have sold homes too. I have to fix credit scores every single day for my customers to get them to a score they need to have in order to close on said home. I have a degree in finance my undergrad, and my graduate in business management. prior to getting into real estate which I have worked in that field for more than a decade I wanted to be a stock broker so I worked at a bank and I actually originated mortgages and second mortgages so I know a good deal about credit how to fix it how to change your score quickly how to manage negative credit etc. You need to be very careful paying charged off accounts and here's why. If you look at your credit report and you look at a charged off account look at the last date of activity meaning the last date that the creditor reported anything to the credit bureaus if it was a year or more out if you make a payment on this charged off account you were going to negatively impact your credit score believe it or not it will negatively impact your credit score because when you make that payment it will get reported to the credit bureaus and will update on your credit file as of that day so let's say today of this year 2021. For example if you have a charge off from 2018 and the last reported activity was I don't know 2019 if you made a payment on it today your score would drop because it would update on your next credit report meaning in 30 days as new activity on a charged off account. My recommendation to my customers is not to pay them if they are more than a certain number of months old or if there is not any recent activity reported to the credit bureaus about said account. Credit is tricky and this is one of those things where everyone logically thinks that paying these items off will positively impact your credit sadly that is not the case it will not positively impact your credit. the truth of the matter is the charged off account has already impacted your credit negatively and continued to impact your credit negatively every month that whoever the creditor is reports to credit bureaus that you are either behind or that they've charged it off. typically once an account is charged off the creditor stops reporting anything there's nothing to report. So my advice to you is to look closely at your credit report and any charged off account pay very close attention to the last activity that was reported especially the date and if it has been a while do not make a payment it is already hurt your score you can't change that all you can do now is put time in between you and that account and focus on the credit that you have now and using it properly that is how you will raise your credit score. Also the fastest way for you to increase your credit score is going to be with revolving credit which is a credit card or line of credit any form of credit that you can use repeatedly use your credit card but never Max it out and carry a balance close to or at credit limit on the card that will negatively impact you never be 30 days late and believe it or not do not pay the credit card off to zero every month if you do that every month your creditor will report zero to the credit bureaus meaning a zero balance so no one can see that you're even using the card if you pay it to zero every month... keep your balance no more than 30% of whatever the credit limit is, make your payments on time and do not pay it to zero or close the account that's the fastest way to increase your credit score. Best of luck!
