Do I settle before or after charge off?

I would settle prior to charge off. Paying to original creditors prevents debtor as shopping cart in eye of attorney or collection agency. Why involved more players in the game if you can deal with original player and call it a day ?

Do not let the account charge off. Settle it for 40 - 60% if you can. I would do anything to avoid attorney, their expense are just ridiculous.

This also depends on how much you personally have to lose. Good job, house, cars etc.,

Greetings DIYnewbie,

For what it's worth, I settled all of mine before charge off.

It saved me lots of headaches, but others may tell you different.

Best progress,
King "Kash" Jabba Labba

Absolutely settle before chargeoff. Once it is charged off, they can sell the debt and your options may be fewer and less attractive. I even made a small payment to keep one from charging off.

I must agree . A charge off can put you in situation where you have slight chance of getting ride of out without hefty fines. For example, law suit file by an attorney will include attorney expense as well nonsense expense while collection agency will keep bugging you. At the end more money will be forked out than now.

Thanks all. I have a 40% over 3 months offer from Citi that I will take. I'll try one more time to get it over 6 months, but they didn't seem to budge on 3 months. Next will be my BOA and Chase which I expect settlement offers in the next month or two. I will follow dantheman's advice and make a payment to keep Discover from charging off. They offerred to lower my interest for 12 months and I think that will do that to buy time. I'm doing this because if BOA & Chase won't do any less than 40% over 90 days then I won't have enough cash to settle Discover.

DIY: clarify with Discover that the payment you make to them just backs you up 30 days. My concern, not knowing exactly how they operate, is that your chances of settlement would be hurt.