This blog is for people out there who cannot pay their credit card bills. If you have lost your job or possibly have suffered from an illness, whatever the reason and you cannot pay your credit card bills...well this blog is for you.
I'm sure you have already had many a sleepless night wondering what you are going to do, maybe you've had good credit your whole life, maybe you've already tried credit card consolidation and now that you missed a payment or two your interest rate has sky-rocketed, your FICA score has plummeted and you don't know how you are going to pay your next bill. Well, what I am going to tell you may go against the grain of many but here is my advice...are you ready, hmmmm?
If you aren't working, if you are renting your home or apartment or sleeping on your brother-in-laws couch, if you are barely able to buy food for your kids, DON'T PAY YOUR CREDIT CARD BILLS. That's right, don't pay them. Don't file for bankruptcy and for goodness sake don't sign up with a consumer credit counseling company. All these people will do is take what little money you have left.
If you file bankruptcy, you will have to pay thousands of dollars to do it and then it will be on your credit report for ten years. Depending on where you live if you simply stop paying your credit card bills your credit will be clean after possibly six years (in some states less than that). Whatever you do, DON'T TALK TO THEM. If you talk to them, you will be giving the credit card companies or banks the advantage and you will also be setting the clock back to zero on the six years. You will have to deal with phone calls but that is easily remedied by getting a cell phone only and screening your calls. If you are not working, the credit card companies cannot take your unemployment checks. If you are working they can sue you and garnish your wages, but unless you owe them a lot of money they probably aren't going to go through the trouble and expense of doing that...it is a risk.
Don't even think of calling a consumer credit counseling company. All these people will tell you to do (after taking their fee which is substantial) is the same thing I am telling you to do right now (only I'm not charging you a fee). They will tell you to stop paying your bills, then after a certain amount of time the credit card companies will start negotiating with you. They will offer to settle with you for sometimes as much as half as much as you owe them. If you can settle with them, do so, if not you will have to run the risk of harassing phone calls and possibly a lawsuit. However, they aren't going to take you to court if you don't have any money. It's not worth their time and the last time I checked there were no debtors prisons.
Now, for all of you out there who think that this is awful, who think that I am encouraging irresponsibility all I have to say is these are the same BANKS that stole millions of dollars in bail out money using a ponzi scheme that they benefited from. These are the same banks that have lobbied (otherwise known as bribing congress) for decades to stack the deck against the consumer. These are the same banks that have brought this country to the worst depression since 1929. So, don't cry to me about irresponsibility, that is exactly what the banks want you to feel, they want you to keep on that hamster mill until they have sucked every ounce of blood from you. You'd better believe that the CEO's of these banks aren't sleeping on their brother-in-laws couch or staying up nights worrying about how to pay the electric bill.
In the end, it's up to you. You can try and pay your credit card bills but if you can't just don't file for bankruptcy and don't sign on with a consumer credit counseling company, if you can't pay your bills just don't pay them until they knock them down to half, then pay them.
Good Luck
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