Debt Settlement: Have You Done It? What Did You Learn?

[moe]

I am thinking of doing this with a very small bunch of money. It would be SO helpful to get people's stories about this and what they've learned.

Some questions I have

(1) Who would settle with you and who would not?

(2) How much did you get on the dollar?

(3) What bad things happened? Lawsuits, etc.

(4) How long did you not pay before you got a settlement offer, etc.

(5) Did you do it yourself? Get help?

(6) Any general advice?

I'm very scared of lawsuits! I'd never heard of that before! YIKES. This would be VERY bad.

Are there any GOOD stories? All I hear about this is bad.

What I wish is that I could take my $8-10,000 and settle this $45,000 debt. But I know that's a pipe dream. Still, it seems like I should be able to do SOMETHING. If I could get $30,000 off my debt, that would give us hope. (We owe more but only one of us can settle, it looks like.)

So crazy. I have great credit! I just can't afford to pay my bills at this point and pay the credit cards. Not even food sometimes.

[onthebrink]

Moe,

I haven't done it but am also strongly considering this option. Here are some sources of information I have found useful.

- debtconsolidationcare.com (forum)
- creditinfocenter.com (blog)
- settleyourcreditcards.com (this is a guy who settled $200K worth of CC debt by about 80%. I found out about it on the web site of a BK attorney. He wrote an e-book, which he sell for $19.99.)

What everyone recommends is to stay clear of debt settlement companies and to try to do it yourself. They also say that you need to miss at least 3 payments before CC companies will negotiate, so your credit score will drop.

Good luck