Getting out of DEBT, The right way!

**mebilly75** · 04-15-2010, 07:03 PM

My fiancé and I had around 24k in credit card debt. Our credit was ok, not great. Mainly, our debt to income was bad. So we made a decision to get out of debt. So we called a consumer credit counseling place (that may actually be the name). Now if you Google that name, you will come up with both positive and negative reviews. We had a rocky start with them. But let me say, we were not trying to settle our debt! It seems that most of the negative posts are about settling the debt; we spent the money, so we wanted to pay it back in full. Settling your debt is when you ask the credit card company to take less money than is owed which generally means you hire a lawyer to negotiate on your behalf. I don’t know about y’all, but I have never seen an attorney do any work before he received a retainer or some kind of money up front, but I could be wrong. So if you try to settle your debt, your first $5000 is going to the law firm and not your creditors. We were offered this solution and we were told all of this upfront. So we decided to go with option 2. Our situation was easy, we could make the payments, but the credit card companies were raising our interest rates to the point that our payments were only covering the interest every month. Consumer counseling has already negotiated interest rates with the credit card companies, so as long as we were with them, our interest rates would stay the same and be a lot less. Its has been a year now, and we are well under the 24k, we now are around 15k. It was not all rosy though, at the beginning, one company that we had two cards with (Chase I think, but don’t quote me) did not re-age. No one called us to let us know, so we were paying as agreed but found out that for three months we showed 30 days late on two cards! So as you can see, it started out bad, but now we check all our balances and follow up quickly on any discrepancies! Since then, we have made enormous progress! In fact, seeing the balances getting smaller and smaller, I have even taken on a new part time online project to make more money to get out of debt even faster!!! You should check it out!
Thanks for reading and I hope this helps someone who may be unsure of what to do next!
Billy
---PAY IT BACK FASTER-----

**mauimagic** · 04-15-2010, 07:12 PM

Congrats on your success and finding a way that works for you!!

**mebilly75** · 05-26-2010, 02:20 PM

After reading your post, I too think I need to start looking into my health. I am getting thick around the mid section!!! lol
Thanks for reading my post!
Billy

**shoiji** · 05-26-2010, 03:33 PM

Sounds great. Try to keep some of the paperwork, especially when you have everything paid off. This way you have something to look back on and remember when the temptation to have a credit card comes back.

**Jethro33** · 05-27-2010, 04:04 AM

Billy...
Congrats on making a change. Its not easy to do the opposite of what everyone else is doing around you. When I made the change to be weird I had to deal with a lot of critiques at my work station. Stay strong and keep FV close. Accountability is a great way to keep steering in the right direction.