If you are looking to pay credit card debt then you might want to know what options are available to you, and how you can pay it off successfully with removing it completely from your credit report. Paying credit card debt requires knowing how credit cards work and more importantly how your credit report works, and how to deal with creditors and collection agencies. It is also different depending on whether or not you are dealing with credit card debt that is old and has gone to collection agencies or whether you are simply a few payments behind, or are mostly current.

There are several options to pay off credit card debt. First, let’s deal with how to pay off credit card debt if you are mostly current. If your credit card reports annually, or every three months and they haven’t yet reported your late payments or you are current, then the best thing that you can do is simply negotiate with them to not report the late payments. This is done by talking to your creditors and asking if you make your payments current if they can show that you were never late in the first place. This way, you get the added bonus of on time payments reported rather than late ones.

However, if you credit card debt is old, then you may have to do it differently. In most cases, the easiest way to remove this debt is by trying to negotiate for complete removal by paying off the debt in full. Most creditors will do this, especially collection agencies who have purchased the debt. Collection agencies buy debt for a fraction of what is owed, and the original company writes it off at this point. Then, collection agencies try to collect, but actually do on a small percentage of loans. This is why they will often have no problem agreeing to remove the bad debt if you pay it in full.

If you don’t have the money, then one option that you may have for paying off credit card debt is a debt consolidation loan. This usually requires good credit, but is a great way to do it, because it keeps you current on all of your recent debt by paying them off, as well as helping you by paying off all of your old debt and giving you the buying power to negotiate for removal from your credit report. Simply tell creditors that you are making those who agree to remove the items priority and they will usually agree to remove the debts from your credit history, from whatever bureaus it is listed on.

Another option that I don’t find so attractive is using a debt consolidation company to pay credit card debts. There are a couple of reasons that I don’t like these companies. First of all, they charge fees, even if they claim to be non-profit. The fees that they charge may be the new consolidated payment on the first, or even first three months of paying on your debt. Secondly, the way that they negotiate may irritate creditors and they may report to the credit bureaus that you are working with a debt consolidation company, which will look bad to future creditors.