Re-aging your credit card essentially means changing the delinquency status of your account. Re-aging a delinquent account can have a positive or negative effect on your credit score. Keep reading to know what re-aging entails and how you can re-age your credit card account to benefit you.
What is a Delinquent Credit Card Account?
Your credit card account will get a delinquent status if the monthly payments have not been paid as agreed. Credit card providers usually report delinquent accounts to credit bureaus, which, in turn, causes your credit score to dip.
Positive Re-Aging
Positive re-aging refers to when your creditor changes the delinquency status of your credit card payments. It is usually done if you’ve missed a few payments in the past but are now more financially stable and are able to make the monthly payments on time.
Unfortunately, with credit card debt, once you miss a few deadlines, it can be difficult to catch up on the payments. This means your credit card account will be reported as delinquent every month until you make the pending payments as well.
If this is happening to you, you can either work with a credit counselor or approach your creditor yourself to re-age your debts. When your debts are re-aged, your creditor might either mark all your previous payments as paid on time or at least mark all payments going forward as paid on time and leave the unpaid or late payment marks as is. Either way, you’ll benefit from this since your current bills will be reported as paid on time and your credit score won’t drop any further, provided you make all your payments on time going forward.
Negative Re-Aging
Negative re-aging is an illegal practice that some collection agencies do either accidentally or intentionally. Negative re-aging happens when your debt has been charged off by the creditor or it is either nearing or past the statute of limitations for collecting the debt. In this case, when your debt is re-aged, it is registered back in your credit report. If your debt has been negatively re-aged, you can contact a lawyer or the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau.
While re-aging recent debts can help your credit score, it is also important to work on a plan to reduce your credit card debt and keep up with your payments.