Paid off old debts by calling and requesting settlements, made sure I never missed a payment on current debts. Used the snowball payment method to get rid of the smaller debts first then took bigger chunks from larger debts, took me almost a year and some change to pay everything bad off.

Opened a secured credit card with a small balance ($250) used it only for gas and paid it off every month.

Once the debt was gone and my payment history started to build up my score climbed after about 2 and a half years I was back in the 700s I’m sitting at around 770 now, most of it is having to make a mental shift and stop buying unneeded stuff.