 TITLE: What Is a Charge-Off? CONTENT: How Does a Charge-Off Affect Your Credit Score?\n-----------------------------------------------\nLate and missed payments hurt your credit scores more than any other single factor, and your scores suffer more every month a bill remains unpaid: A payment that's 30 days late hurts your score pretty significantly, and the damage gets worse if the bill remains unpaid after 60 days, 90 days and so on. A charge-off will lower your credit score, but it typically occurs only after six successive months of delinquency-related score reductions, so your score is likely in pretty rough shape by then anyway. As with any negative entry on your credit report, the exact number of points you'll lose depends on the scoring system used (FICO® Score☉ or VantageScore, for instance), what your score was before the entry appeared, and how many other negative entries already appear on your credit report.\nYou should do your best to satisfy all debts you owe, but paying off charge-offs and collections likely won't benefit your credit score much. The negative impact to your scores will ease over time, and credit scores will slowly recover over the space of several years.\nSo if you want to raise your credit scores—which may be necessary to get lenders to even consider reviewing an application from you—you're better off using available funds to pay down debt on open accounts before using them to settle charge-offs or collections. END