Cleaning up my credit

You can help clear up your credit yourself by pulling your credit reports and challenging anything that you feel is inaccurate. You can get a secured credit card and pay it early without maxing it out. Time does heal all wounds, like you said but not scratching them will speed up the process. In other words self control is paramount!

That is a great question. I want to clean my credit too but I'm afraid of all of the scams out there. I think that time and going through your credit reports with a fine-toothed comb to dispute incorrect information is about the only thing that can be done, aside from getting positive info reported to boost your score. But...there are people here who are 1 million times more knowlegable than I am so hang tight and someone will be here soon. :-)

You can also try to dispute accurate but negative entries as though they were errors, too.

Can you ever get the stuff off once you settle with a company? Like get them to remove or revise it? (Is this a stupid question?)
I have some medical stuff I need to clear and of course the dreaded bad stuff that happened during bad times...

You can try writing them a letter, or you can try going through the dispute process (even if the entry is valid). In the future, if you have any more debts to settle, you can negotiate to have the entry deleted...get the agreement in writing prior to sending them your money.

And no, that wasn't a stupid question.