<prompt> Human: My credit score turned out to be very poor at 570 due to an unpaid Comcast bill from a few years ago. The thing is, I only just graduated college, am still living at home and have never had a Comcast account in my name. Turns out my parents had decided to put my name on the account since their credit was so bad already and then left 160 unpaid and never told me about it. I cant really expect my parents to pay it because were all struggling to keep the household running, so the only way its going to get paid is if I save up and do it myself. Im just worried about starting my adult life with bad credit. How much can I expect paying it off to help my credit score and what else can I do to bring my score back into good standing?  <response>: Freeze your credit with all three credit reporting agencies. That way they cant do it again. An item stays on your report for a maximum of seven years, so it will stop harming your credit score sometime in the near-ish future. 