How long credit score from 550 to 600?

Credit
1

My adult child is looking to get their credit score up to qualify for an apartment. They will be signing up for a credit counselor from Clark’s recommended website. Their credit score is around 550 now, I think. I assume this is due to unpaid medical and credit card bills that have (at least some) charged off, but I don’t know how many or amounts or anything.

I assume the credit counselor will help them get on some kind of payment schedule to become current on these bills.

  1. Would it be better to do a payment schedule and get all current, or to just pay off as many of the debts as possible?
    1a) If it is better to start by paying off individual debts, I assume start with lowest amounts first to payoff as many as possible as quickly as possible? Then move on to bigger ones?

  2. How long will it possibly take to get the credit score to go from 550 to 600? I realize there are a lot of factors here.

2

How quickly your son’s credit score will improve depends on how successfully your son does the following:

  1. Budgeting- his keeping track to where every penny goes

  2. Reduce his expenses and if feasible increase his income- use Clark’s website

  3. Stop acquiring new debt

  4. Pay down debt a) snowball method involves paying the lowest balance debt first. An advantage of this approach is that you see progress quicker b) avalanche method of paying off the highest interest debt first. The advantage of this approach is that it reduces the total interest paid

My understanding is that the National Foundation for Credit Counselling that Clark recommends has negotiated lower interest rates with some credit card issuers.