What's The Best Way To Pay Off My Collections?
If you can pay it then there's no need to involve a credit counselor.  After all, their main role when you use them is to negotiate payments with creditors so you can pay off your debts.  In this case you have the funds to pay, so why make it any more complicated than it needs to be? To be honest, a 597 score is going to make it tough for you to find auto financing.  Whatever options you find, they'll charge pretty steep interest rates and have high payments because they'll keep you on as short a payment term as your finances will allow.  I would strongly suggest that you work on improving your score for awhile before trying to buy a car.  If you can, buy a car for cash.  You might not get much, but it will solve your transportation problem while you work on resolving your credit issues. Using a credit counselor won't have any impact on your credit score as far as the debts are concerned.  What will make a difference is not having them show as open collections, which is pretty bad.  You'll still take a hit for having gone to collections in the first place, but paying them off will mitigate at least some of the effect. I hope this helps. Good luck!
"Let me give you some advice from someone who has experience at both ends - had student loan issues myself and parents ran financial aid department at local university. Quick story of my student loan.  I graduated in debt and could not pay at first due to having kids way too early.  I deferred.  Schools will have rules for deference.  There are also federal guidelines - lets not get specific on this though since these change every year it seems.   So basically there is an initial deferment period in which any student can request for the repayments to be deferred and it is granted.  Then there is an extended deferment.  Here someone has to OK it.  This is really rather arbitrary and up to the school/lender.  My school decided to not extend mine after I filled out a mound of paperwork and showed that even without paying I had basically $200 a month for the family to live off past housing/fixed expenses. Eventually they had to cave, because I had no money so they gave me an extended deferment.  After the 5 years I started paying.  Since my school had a very complex way to pay, I decided to give them 6 months at a time.  You would think they would love that right?  (On the check it was clearly stated what months I was paying for to show that I was not prepaying the loan off) Well I was in collections 4 months later.  Their billing messed up, set me up for prepayment.  They then played dumb and acted like I didn't but I had a picture of the check and their bank's stamp on the back... They couldn't get my loan out of collections - even though they messed up.  This is probably some lower level employee trying to cover their mistake.  So this office tells creditors to leave me alone but I also CANNOT pay my loan because the credit collection agency has slapped a 5k fee on the 7k loan.  So my loan spent 5 years (kid you not) like this.  It was interest free since the employee stopped the loan processing. Point being is that if you don't pay the lender will either put your loan into deferment automatically or go after you.  MOST (not all) schools will opt for deferment, which I believe is 2 years at most places.  Then after that you have the optional deferment.  So if you keep not paying they might throw you into that bucket.   However if you stop paying and you never communicate with them the chances of you getting the optional deferment are almost none - unless school doesn't know where you live.  Basically if you don't respond to their mail/emails you get swept into their credit collection process.  So just filling out the deferment stuff when you get it - even if they deny it - could buy you up to 10 years - kid you not.   Now once you go into the collection process... anything is game.  As long as you don't need a home/car loan you can play this game.  What the collection agency does depends on size of loan and the rules.  If you are at a ""major"" university the rules are usually more lax, but if you are at the smaller schools, especially the advertised trade/online schools boom - better watch out.  Wages will be garnished very soon.  Expect to go to court, might have to hire an attorney because some corrupt lenders start smacking on fees - think of the 5k mine smacked on me.   So the moral of the story is you will pay it off.  If you act nice, fill out paperwork, talk to school, and so on you can probably push this off quite a few years.  But you are still paying and you will pay interest on everything.  So factor in that to the equation.  I had a 2.3% loan but they are much higher now.   Defaulting isn't always a bad thing.  If you don't have the money then you don't have it.  And using credit cards to help is not the thing to do.  But you need to try to work with the school so you don't incur penalties/fees and so that your job doesn't have creditors calling them.   My story ended year 4 that my loan was in collection.  A higher up was reviewing my case and called me.  Told her the story and emailed her a picture of their cashed check.  She was completely embarrassed when she was trying to work out a plan for me and I am like - how about I come down tomorrow with the 7k.  But even though lender admitted fault this took 20+ calls to agencies to clear up my credit so I could buy a house.   So your goal should be:" Overall, I strongly recommend cashing out your savings and becoming debt free today, and then never borrowing again except for a house. Advantages: Disadvantages: My wife and I paid of all of my grad school debt last year, and we’re paying off all of her grad school debt this year.  To pay that aggressively, we’ve had to learn to live on a much tighter budget.  But when we’re done, if we simply invest what we have been paying toward debt into the stock market, our nest egg will compound to over $10 million by the time we retire.  According to Dave Ramsey, when the Forbes 400 were polled, 75% of them cited becoming and staying debt-free as the single best way to build wealth: http://www.daveramsey.com/article/three-steps-to-wealth-building-for-young-adults/lifeandmoney_college/text4/ From my limited experience, having taken a class on Bankruptcy in order to become a paralegal, Chapter 11 is the portion of the Bankruptcy Code that allows certain corporate entities to reorganize. Basically, the entity files for bankruptcy protection to halt credit collections or any number of reasons, and then work with the courts to get out. If the entity can put together a reasonable sounding restructuring plan, the court may allow them to do it. A restructuring plan essentially is a plan of who to pay back, when, and by what means (this is seriously a simple explanation, it's much more complex than this). So if the Court approves the plan, the entity will attempt to carry it out and come out of bankruptcy several years down the road in a more solvent position. If the Court rejects the plan or the plan fails, then the entity has to then engage in Chapter 7 proceedings (selling assets to pay off debts). I would sit down with the creditors and negotiate smallest amount you can get before agreeing with whatever you have to pay. Think that, for them, it's much more convenient to get way less than $36K than to see you in collections. Needless to say, don't tell them you have to money to cancel off :-) What the other's said is right. You build credit by paying over time. Keeping your balance under the halfway mark of your limit and paying it down over the course of a fair amount of periods yields the best results. So if you have a limit of $1500 then charge a $600 credit and pay $100+ interest over 6 months. Best yet are loans with fix installments. This behavior tells the credit agencies you are responsible and you pay your debts. In their eyes you are a low risk high ROI, statistically speaking. You cannot just decide to declare bankruptcy and make the debts go away. Bankruptcy proceedings under chapter 7 include accounting of all of your assets and income, and all of your debts, and dividing all your assets and income (except for amounts left for your own support) between the debtors. So if you can (i.e.: capable) pay the debts off - there's nothing magical in bankruptcy that will make it any better for you. You will still pay the debts off, except that now you will also have the huge (and much heavier) stain of bankruptcy. For chapter 7, the length it stays on the credit report is 10 years, not 7. Under chapter 13, the procedure is less drastic (doesn't include complete liquidation of all of your assets), but the result is equally not as good - you still pay all your debts but they may be reorganized (interest rates change, durations change, some things can still be charged off - but not likely if you actually have the capability to pay). Chapter 13 stays on your credit report for 7 years. "Thanks to the joint lease, I guess you're still contractually on the hook for the remainder of the rent. Did the apartment owners actually contact you before sending the debt collectors after you? As you do technically owe the money, they can sue you if you don't pay, so it's not ""just"" on your credit report. That said, if they haven't contacted you before sending the goons in, I'd try to negotiate the collection fee - 40% sounds a tad excessive to me." I'll have to think it through, but at the very least unless your debt is a pure discount instrument and  you are using cash flows, some if that money IS getting paid during those 5 years. As in if you are using earnings, they pay p&amp;i. Or if earnings and pure discount instruments, then amortized interest (I think, been a while).  You see the actual numbers and know what you are trying to do, but I'm a little lost. Are you building a discount model with a multiple terminal and using ev as the multiple? Are you using free cash flow to firm for the discounting? I'm guessing that's the case.