Due to some very poor decision making during what I can only describe as a mental health crisis (I quit my job and school, stopped taking my SSRI and anxiety meds, cut off all contact with everyone except my alcoholic boyfriend, and more or less didn’t leave my apartment for about 6 months) I really tanked my financial position a couple years back. Recovering from the damage I caused during that time has been a challenge to say the least, but I’m slowly progressing. One of the things that was hanging over my head was a charged off Discover card with a balance of ~$2300. I’ve had the money in my emergency fund for a bit but I’m not willing to part with it because I still am not feeling entirely stable given the state of the world as we know it. Over the past couple years I’ve gotten a few settlement offers, but I was hesitant and didn’t really know what this would mean for my credit score. In February I got another offer to settle for $453 and after doing some aggressive googling and reading here, I bit the bullet and made the payment. I expected either no effect or a slight dip in my score but lo and behold, my FICO score (as provided by Experian) went up 25 points this month! I’m now sitting at 673, and I know improvements from here on out will be slow because all of my credit cards and student loans are in good standing so all I can do is wait for late payments to recede further into the distance. Still, that little jump means a lot to me and hopefully will help me out when I sign a lease for a new apartment towards the end of the year.
Anyways a general thanks to everyone who contributes here, this is really an invaluable resource for a topic I’m pretty private about in real life. Love you guys<3
Submitted April 01, 2021 at 08:17PM by shmoneyalt https://ift.tt/3sLwoIK
