Trying to Save a CC

[backtoschool]

I had a similar situation with a dentist and thought I was going to have to continue payments to get the work done. Lawyer said I had to include him but who I paid POST discharge was no one's business but my own. I explained to the dentist and he was fine with it (some dentists are eager to work with you these days since their own incomes are done from many people delaying non-essential work). However, I got lucky and when my then-fiance found out about the whole thing (I was trying to just handle it myself) he insisted on paying for all the work.
I think you should be okay, because if nothing else you can show medical need as a reason for the "preference". Trustees are pretty understanding on that usually, I think.

I think that paying medical bills post discharge is ok. (if you want to maintain a relationship with your doctor or dentist and want to keep that debt for some reason instead of going to a new medical professional to get the work done) LaurieM was talking about post filing which is a very different animal from post discharge/closing. You should not pay the medical bills post filing as the trustee might claw the payments back and you are just throwing money away. Post discharge, well that is up to you.

[backtoschool]

Most of you are kinder about Credit Counseling than I am. My personal take on it is:

1. It damages your credit rating to go through one of those outfits you make a monthly payment to for however many years, some say it damages it as much as BK.
2. Even if you are talking about credit counseling where you are doing a "do it yourself" on payments, 99% of the time, by the time you are there you are not realistically going to get out of debt without some type of bankruptcy.

My attorney gave this as a guide, and it makes perfect sense to me:

"If you cannot reasonably get yourself out of debt in the next five years you need to seriously consider bankruptcy. "Reasonably" meaning that if eliminating the luxuries of life (vacations, expensive clothes, most restaurant meals, cable TV) will not leave you with enough money to pay off debt and build three months salary in savings for emergency. If you work in accounting or banking or a position that requires a security clearance and do not have an alternative career plan, you will likely want to get one prior to filing or not file, period. With that exception, frankly, 95% of people in this situation should file."

You could argue that as a BK lawyer, he is biased to BK however it makes absolute sense to me. Postponing the inevitable with "credit counseling" also delays your ability to save and plan for the future.

I am sure someone somewhere did well with it, I just have not met that person.

I agree with you Leena. Credit counseling rarely works. Lowering the interest rates on cards when you have $100k of credit card debt is not going to offer you a fresh start. There is no "fresh start" with credit counseling either, since you still have all the debt on your reports and are still liable for all of it. Also, a creditor can refuse to participate in a credit counseling plan and can opt out of it later if they so choose. You have no legal rights to continue a credit counseling plan the way you would have legal rights in a chapter 13 which would give you the same results as a credit counseling payoff plan.