Credit Report Charge-Offs and What to Do About Them [mortgagefraud101.blogspot.com]

Credit Report Charge-Offs and What to Do About Them [mortgagefraud101.blogspot.com]

Bankrate, Inc. (NYSE-Listed RATE), a leading destination of personal finance channels, visits the NYSE to celebrate the company's successful completion of its initial public offering. In honor of the occasion, President and CEO Thomas R. Evans rings The Closing BellSM. About Bankrate, Inc. (NYSE: RATE) The Bankrate network of companies includes Bankrate.com, Interest.com, Mortgage-calc.com, Nationwide Card Services, InsureMe CreditCardGuide.com, Bankaholic, CreditCards.com and NetQuote. Each of these businesses helps consumers to make informed decisions about their personal finance matters. The company's flagship brand, Bankrate.com is a destination site of personal finance channels, including banking, investing, taxes, debt management and college finance. Bankrate.com is the leading aggregator of rates and other information on more than 300 financial products, including mortgages, credit cards, new and used auto loans , money market accounts and CDs, checking and ATM fees, home equity loans and online banking fees. Bankrate.com reviews more than 4800 financial institutions in 575 markets in 50 states. Bankrate.com provides financial applications and information to a network of more than 75 partners, including Yahoo! (Nasdaq: YHOO), America Online (NYSE: AOL), The Wall Street Journal and The New York Times (NYSE: NYT). Bankrate.com's information is also distributed through more than 500 newspapers.

mortgagefraud101.blogspot.com 17 June 2011 Bankrate rings the NYSE Closing Bell

According to Bankrate.com the number one reason for getting turned down on credit is because of a charge-off. A charge-off is often seen as a negative indication that you have not been responsible in the past with your finances and consequently you cannot be trusted in the future.

However, as we all know, this is not necessarily true. Especially in this current economy, many people are facing financial challenges that they have never had before. In order to recover financially we all need to know what to do about negative credit showing on our credit reports.

Typically creditors will charge-off a debt if a payment has not been made on the account for 180 days. However, as a consumer you need to realize that this does not relieve you of the debt and you still owe the debt. The creditor can continue their collection efforts in any way they choose.

It is possible for these and other negative credit issues to end up on even the most credit-worthy person's reports.

A bill could have been inadvertently overlooked. You could have moved and forgot about telling the creditor so their bills were unable to reach you. You could have even thought that someone else was paying it, for example in the case of divorce when the courts gave it to your ex-spouse.

It is not at all uncommon for your first notification of a charge-off to show up when you are denied credit because of it. No one is immune to having bad credit information showing up on their credit report.

There is also the dilemma of what to do about a charge-off on your credit report. You can pay it off and think you are in the clear yet the negative mark may stay on your report. Another concern when you pay it off is that the seven-year period that it stays on your report starts anew whenever there is activity on the account.

If you pay off a 2-year-old bad debt and the time starts anew, you could end up having the negative mark on your credit for 9 years unless you get them to remove it completely.

However, you can take steps to get negative information removed from your record. With credit bureau disputes or creditor negotiations you may be able to improve the status of the negative credit or even get it completely removed from your credit reports. You will probably have to deal directly with your creditors and you can do this on your own or consider the services of a professional credit repair service to assist you.

In many cases you will not have to wait 7 long years to improve the status or even remove the negative credit from your credit reports. You just need to take some intelligent action and get some results.

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