They really do want your blood

[Tman]

I still hope to avoid filing for bankruptcy. I am self employed and my income is down to about a third of what it was. I stopped paying my CCs in January. I avoided the calls for awhile, but eventually got tired of them. So I started answering them. The smallest balance CC that I owed was willing to forego interest and drop all late charges as long as I paid a minimum payment for 12 months. The minimum payment was less than the regular payment so I thought maybe I can make this work after all. I decided to talk to my other CCs. Another smaller balance CC reduced interest to 5% and waived all fees similar to the first one. Then reality hit. The larger balance cards pretty much are daring me to file. They claim they have no program to help. I explained that the last thing I wanted to do was file but unless they were willing to work with me I had no choice. One said, sell your stuff on Craigslist another said see if you can sign up as a guinea pig in a drug study and then another said have you checked with local charities to see if they can help you. I got POd at that. Why should some charity give them money so that they can charge me 30% and add another $39 a month? Oh no, they said, the charity would be giving me food and my money would be paying them. The more I try to do the right thing, the more it looks like doing the correct thing is the way to go.

[flyinbroke]

One told me I should borrow money from relatives or take out balances on another CC to pay them. He suggested selling stuff on eBay or CL...I said I put up 600 dollars worth of stuff, made 80 off of it and paid eBay 55 in fees. Craigslist was less successful...got a couple of scammers looking for me to ship stuff to Nigeria for them.

I laughed in the guy's face (figuratively) on the CC one....and asked if I can borrow money of that particular card (I had 3K available) to pay him....

[Dst1]

Yes, the system as it stands is very binary. Either you are doing well and never missing a payment or you are in BK. There is very little gray area.

[dakota112]

Do not enter into enslavitude to these animals. File BK, screw them and move on. Life will go on and it will be better for you.

[Bell30656]

The collection agents job is to get you to pay. If they can do this by making you feel bad? So be it. You are not the innocent party in this... after all, the credit card company loaned you money expecting to make a living on the interest and fees.

I've done it or I wouldn't be on this forum. Been there, done that, have the t-shirt... It isn't the lender's fault that caused the circumstances resulting in your non-re-payment of the money they loaned you. However, they are the ones out the money. Just remind yourself that is why they charged you all those fees and interest all those years... because THIS could happen.

Lending money is a gamble... this time <insert lender here> rolled craps.

[Flamingo]

Do this...put yourself in the lender's place...what if you lent several thousand dollars to someone, have a signed contract showing payback with interest and listing terms if there was breach of contract (i.e., they did not continue payments or stopped paying). Would you just sit there in dispair wringing your hands over the situaton or would you attempt to collect what was owed to you? That is exactly what the creditors are doing...once you realize that you will view the entire situatoin in a different light and handle it differently. It's business, it's a contract, they want what is owed to them - your personal life does not matter to them - they lent you money which you signed to pay back...simple as that...financial, court and business transactions are emotionless.

[flyinbroke]

True enough but it is a very lopsided contract considering one side never signs a thing and that one side can change the rules at will, whenever they feel like it. This is where a lot of people ran into trouble. I know contracts I signed were for fixed rates, only to have a big bank buy them out and change the rules. I had one fixed rate that, as soon as I had cash in hand, they changed the rules to variable and shot the rates up whenever they damn well pleased. Don't even get me started on the arbitrary closing of accounts or credit limit decreases...all severely damaging to credit when you are in payoff mode.

Did I intend to pay? Sure. Do they come in before putting food on the table or a roof over my head? Hell no. This is business, not personal, and I am CEO of my own life and changing the contract at will. OK, so I take a ding in the credit for a while...when you have cash, you don't need a high score...banks like MONEY! Life goes on, the economy will improve and they will be begging most of us to come back. I am afraid that many will succumb to the siren song again.

[Tman]

Actually, I can do better than imagine the situation is reversed. I can remember it! I used to manage a finance company. We made presonal loans at 25% and mortgage loans at 12% to as high as 18% (variable). We handled collections in the the office up to an including bankruptcies, judgements, garnishments, repossessions and foreclosures. As manager my job included dealing with all of those situations. My hands were tied to a certain degree, but I know I saved the company tons of money by convincing higher ups to waive interest and late charges in return for six months of good faith payments to save someone's home or farm from being taken from them. It makes absolutely no sense to me how any business would gamble on losing their entire "investment" by trying to beat a dead horse for money that they do not have. If you are going to charge an account off, why wouldn't you at least give the borrower a chance to repay it? What difference does it make whether that debt is charged off now or later on if the "good faith" doesn't come through? I didn't ask to be put in this position. Yes I borrowed the money and yes I said I would pay it back. But I didn't ask for my completely up to date CC limit to be reduced or my rates to be increased either. I also didn't ask for my income to be shredded by these same banks choosing to save a hundred dollars by using a realtor to do my job (I am an appraiser). I didn't ask for the government to undermine my profession. I didn't ask for any of that. Nor did I ask for economy to tank and unemployment to soar, so that there aren't even any jobs to take with which I could pay my bills.

[Flamingo]

True enough but it is a very lopsided contract considering one side never signs a thing and that one side can change the rules at will, whenever they feel like it. This is where a lot of people ran into trouble. I know contracts I signed were for fixed rates, only to have a big bank buy them out and change the rules. I had one fixed rate that, as soon as I had cash in hand, they changed the rules to variable and shot the rates up whenever they damn well pleased. Don't even get me started on the arbitrary closing of accounts or credit limit decreases...all severely damaging to credit when you are in payoff mode.

Did I intend to pay? Sure. Do they come in before putting food on the table or a roof over my head? Hell no. This is business, not personal, and I am CEO of my own life and changing the contract at will. OK, so I take a ding in the credit for a while...when you have cash, you don't need a high score...banks like MONEY! Life goes on, the economy will improve and they will be begging most of us to come back. I am afraid that many will succumb to the siren song again.

Oh I agree but the difference is that no one stood there with a gun to the borrower's head forcing them not to read the verbiage of the contract and forcing them to sign. The person that lends the money has the upper hand as it is their money they are lending out. Just like if you purchase car insurance or anything else with a contract...you abide by their terms as the other party is providing the service. All what you are saying above is listed somewhere in the brochure or contract verbiage provided to a borrower to review before they sign. If they sign without reading and understanding, it's their fault. If the understood what they signed, there should be no suprise that rates will skyrocket when the payment is missed, etc. If one actually reads through a loan or credit contract before signing, very few would sign on the dotted line...When one gets into financial trouble, it's so easy to blame someone else for the situation that one actually puts oneself in. No one wants to state they screwed up or didn't know what they were doing so when the job loss hits or the income is reduced or stops, they state the problem is due to that and not the huge amount of debt amassed that cannot be paid back now...Debt causes bankruptcy. If one loses a job or has hours reduced, a divorce hits, etc. and there is no debt or little debt, bankruptcy doesn't even enter the picture....

The American consumer is hopefully going to learn a lot from this economy and credit as it was known in the past (i.e., easy to obtain) will no longer exist.

[Bell30656]

When we signed those lender's agreements we were not forced to. We gave the lender the right to change those terms as they saw fit. It's amazing what we will agree too when they lenders are handing out money.

[flyinbroke]

It is finding the two or three words that change everything in the contract, usually in subatomic print.

I think this is all cyclical in nature. I do agree, Flamingo, that credit is going to be darn near impossible to get in the next several years. However, I do think many banks will forget and be handing them out to everyone and their pets soon thereafter. They looooove those monster profits too much to forfeit them.