Credit

Look into Dave Ramsey, that’s what my husband and I did. We did that for about a year and then we had 8mo left to be debt free. recently we decided to borrow off of our 401k pay off our debts and let our credit sit for a few months (it takes a few months for your credit score to increase - the credit calculations look to see if you’ll fall into the same trends debt/income ratio etc when compiling your score

If he has a true collection account, paying it off will not raise his score unless they remove the account from his report altogether. Otherwise it’ll still show as a collection with a $0 balance. If you’re saying he has accounts that are 30/60/90 days past due, paying those will make a significant difference in his score if he brings them current.

When you pay things off in collections make sure they give you the receipt then make sure you dispute it with the credit companies after it’s been paid and you have the receipt. My husband paid something off in collections, got a receipt and got it disputed and it got taken off pretty quickly and his score went up quite a bit

Definitely work out payment plans with em if you need to or pay them off. Another good thing to do is get the Capital One secured credit card. Mind you it’s the only C.C. I have and I’m against them completely. I had a 467 score and got my card back in September. I’m now a 639. Because of the small usage on it and faithful payments I’ve managed to get large jumps of credit on my score along with raising my borrowing limit. It helps both ways. Get the credit karma app if you don’t already. You can monitor everything and get the collection agency info. I even found a few things on mine that should’ve never been on there and had them disputed off.

Make the minimum payments on the things that are not in collections, and focus on paying off the bills in collections first, as those are incredibly damaging to his credit. Unfortunately, even though paying those off will definitely cause his credit score to rise, it’s still not going to be good for probably quite a while. Can you get the mortgage in just your name?

Talk to the collection agencies. A lot of times if you pay they will take it off your credit

Always pay bills first. The last thing you need is something else going to collections. Don't just pay off collections willy nilly either. Look in your local area for someone who helps with debt collection/consolidation etc. They broker with debt collectors on your behave. Let's say you owe $1000, they work and settle your debt for $200, sometimes even less. Unfortunately, paying debts off doesn't make your credit sky rocket. It can barely even make a dent. What he should do is go to his bank and get a secured credit card. It generally requires a deposit. Somewhere between $100 and $300. With his credit being the way it is, I'd say $300. That $300 becomes his credit limit. As he pays that bill every month, on time, his credit limit will increase and so will his credit score. After a year of paying on time, that deposit goes back to him.

My husband is the same.From our understanding, if you pay the collectors you start from scratch, clean slate. Or you can ignore them, not answer the phone or emails, and then after 7 years that goes away and you start from scratch.If no contact has been made in 7 years, they have to drop your husbands case and everything goes away.So you can either pay it off now or wait 7 years. Either way, he would get a clean slate and have to start building his credit back.Both ways don’t raise your credit, they just create a blank slate to start over.