Considering BK

[spiderman]

It's a tough decision to make but my wife and I are looking at filing Ch 7. Between job changes and our poor managment of credit cards we now cannot pay our bills. We've tried negotiating with creditors and bill collectors to no avail. Consumer credit companies are a joke! We tried to refinance but we have too much debt. One banker told us to file for bk and then they could loan us the money!! We have a mortgage, two vehicle payments, and 32000 in cc debt. We did finally find a lender to refi our mortgage in Jan. at much higher int rate. We were a couple of months behind on a 1st and 2nd mort. We've finally gotten the mortgage and the vehicle loans current but we've had to quit paying on the cc's to do that. The calls have slowed down for now but a couple of the cc's have now been charged off and I'm starting to get calls from the companies who bought the bad debts. Any thoughts or suggestions please?

[shygal]

Well spiderman, I just wanted to add to your thread that I agree TOTALLY.. that consumer credit counseling is a joke! We did it for a year and saw absolutely no change in our balances.. they actually increased, figure that out! We haven't paid our credit cards in over 3 months and we get ( based on the caller id box ) 88 calls per day from the cc companies or agencies who have purchased them. We have met with a lawyer and our in the process of filing Bk...so until the papers are filed you just have to deal with the calls.. or take the phone off the hook

[mothersvox]

that consumer credit counseling is a joke!)

Shygal is so so so right. It's a bad joke.

As I posted somewhere else on this site, these agencies are underwritten by the credit card industry through grants. Their mission is to recover more money for your creditors than the creditors would be able to recover in BK. If they can get you into a program, they can squeeze a little more out of you before you eventually file.

Credit card companies are their real clients.

Under the new BK law that was just sent to the House of Reps, people seeking BK protection will be forced to meet with credit counselors before filing. Another provision of the law, courtesy of its author, a lobbyist for MBNA.