hi all ~ i am new here, and i have spent an hour or so sorting through posts. i stumbled onto this forum while i was trying to figure out if the secured credit card deals i was looking at were scams. frankly, i wasn't really even thinking that hard about making a decision to start a disciplined approach to repairing my credit, which pretty much went down the tubes in 1999. my probably misinformed notion was that i would let 7 years pass by, hoping that the charge-offs on my report (amounting to probably $35K in debt) would start falling off, and, well, look here, it's 2006 already, and so SOON! so, i got to doing some reading here, and am now sort of embracing the idea of taking a more active approach to managing my "credit future." so, where to start? i have long been operating on the notion that if my plan is to just wait it out for 7 years, i should do just that - i.e. avoid any conversations, deals, whatever with any of the creditors. give them absolutely no hope of dealing with me, let the corporate bastards charge me off, let the bad reporting fall off the report. so, question one, good idea or bad? given that i am now approaching my 7 years, should i at this point be sticking to my guns? question 2 - from what i have read here and elsewhere, it looks like the most favorably reviewed bad-credit credit cards (which i really only want so i can make small online purchases) is Orchard (Household). moderate fees, decent customer service, not ostensibly set up to create late fees and other penalties, pre-disposed to allowing the customer to move up the credit product/service line. yes? question 3 - one of my debts gone bad was with Capital One. They recently sent me a deal by which i would acknowledge about half of the debt they originally charged off, agree to a monthly payment against that AND give me a couple hundred bucks worth of available credit on a new card. goes back to question one - would i be better off just waiting'em out (is that a realistic strategy) another year instead of paying the couple thousand bucks they want back from me? i think that's it for now. thanks, btw, for this place, for all of the info and energy. it feels kind of nice in here... ~david
Read many newbie sections, then read them again. Check out the section at Creditboards too...good stuff. First thing I would do is check SOL in your state on all those accounts. Most states have different periods for open vs. installments accounts (in my state, CCs are shorter than loans). So check that. Also, opt-out before messing with CRAs. Then, when SOL runs out, and if you WANT to get aggressive, dispute those debts with CRAs. You can let 'em sit and age or you can attack this head-on, aggressively and intelligently. It's up to and what you want from your credit reports. There are tons of resources to help you along the way. Either way, good luck!
