| Old debts get written off and removed from your account after 7 years, which begins when the creditor first reports your account -- however some shady companies use whatever information or payments you send them to change the date of your account on your credit reports so that it prolongs the time it takes to get them written off -- this way they can have leverage over you which improves their chances of getting their money. Don't fret, you can easily write to any of the credit reporting agencies if this happens and have them remove inaccurate entries, but of course you have to continue to track your credit score and credit reports until they are completely cleaned up. It's funny but most people think that paying off charged-off accounts is going to help them, and really all it does is show lenders that you are responsible to pay even your late accounts.. however in the world of money timeliness is more important. Even if you pay your old collections such information is not removed until the 7-year time period ends and the fact that you paid late still negatively impacts your overall score no matter if you pay it off or not. So in some cases it may be better to just wait and do other things to boost your score while the other items expire.
It doesn't take long for short term changes like account balances, payments, and available credit to show up on your credit report and effect your score -- likely these are the things to have impact over the short term, and you have a better change of fixing your score if you try to address one of those issues, which you can do easily in a matter of weeks.
Here are my 10 steps you can use to build your credit score quickly. I raised mine to well over 700 points fro 500 using these steps in less than a year:
1. Know and Track Your Credit Score (be sure to sign up for the free trial of your credit score monitoring listed on the article below. It really helped my get my score up.)
2. Never Miss a Payment, Starting Today
3. Never use more than 20% of your Available Credit
4. Keep Credit Cards that Have No Annual Fees Open For as Long as Possible
5. Extend Your Credit Limit on Cards You Already Have before You Get New Ones
6. Get Credit Cards that Have CashBack Rewards to Contribute to your Balance
7. Transfer Your Balance to a Credit Card with a Lower Interest Rate and a Higher Available Credit-
8. If You Think You Are Going to be FORCED to Pay a Bill Late Ask for an Extension or Payment Plan
9. Take out a Small Personal Loan and Repay it Over a Year
10. Ask Someone With Good Credit if They will Account Shadow you
When you're trying to build a solid credit score it's important to get a comprehensive view of what is actually effecting it...
Your Credit Score (also known as your MyFico score) is calculated with the following breakdown:
* 35% -> History of Payments
* 30% -> Debt to Credit Ratio (available credit)
* 15% -> Credit History (length of open accounts)
* 10% -> New Credit (are you expanding your credit)
* 10% -> Credit Types in Use (varied credit types from loans to credit cards)
If you excel in one area and lack in another, only fixing the areas which you lack are going to improve your score.
You can read more about these tips on my blog: How Can I Increase My Credit Score
* http://millionster.com/articles/debt/increase-fico-credit-score/
Collections can impact up to -50 points on your score! ouch!
But good luck, and I hope I answered your questions.. =) | 
