You will see the best credit repair results if you time your credit repair efforts properly. People aren't always in a position to do this because most of the time people simply need to get it done because they have put it off for far too long. As a general rule, then,, the best time to repair credit is NOW. Just get it done.
But if you have a fair amount of outstanding collections and old bad debt, you might want to do yourself a favor. If the debts are really old, then you might be wise not to dispute them because after 7 years of no activity, they should just go away on their own. If you dispute the accounts, you could reactivate them. Paying those old accounts could also reactivate them, thereby allowing the creditor more time to keep reporting them against you. If the accounts have a zero balance, then you could go ahead and dispute them because removing old zero-balance collections from your report can and will greatly improve your credit profile. Don't hesitate to dispute collections or bad accounts that have no balances on them. Typically, a creditor will not respond to that kind of dispute since you don't owe them anything. And when they fail to respond, the account is deleted and that is a good thing for you.
If you have small collections that you are able to pay off, you should go ahead and pay them off. Immediately after you pay them off, go ahead and dispute them. You might just get lucky and the creditor might not respond to the dispute since they will see that the account has been paid. It could also happen that the creditor will update your balance to zero more quickly than they would otherwise have done.
If you are going through a bankruptcy, don't do credit repair until it is discharged. If you are paying on bad debt, don't do credit repair until the accounts are paid in full. If you are paying on a judgment, don't dispute the judgment until you have finished paying it off.
About this Author
Matthew Wierzbinski is one of the owners of www.creditblossom.com. He was a mortgage broker for over 7 years and during that time he was able to help people repair their own credit successfully. All the knowledge he built up during those years has been poured into the CreditBlossom web site. Matt wrote a credit repair guide and built credit repair software. These are available to the public for free at the CreditBlossom.com web site. Self credit repair is something anyone considering repairing their own credit should look into before they approach a company.
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