Credit Problems? Email to a friend.

I wonder what an independent credit counselor would advise....

I'm very curious about what they know from their experiences with many cases about how people navigate these waters.

I'm so disappointed after you talked to the sympathetic phone person that the credit card bank staff credit counselor just said no.  In fact, I think I've been hearing reports on the radio about the backwardness of charging more fees on top of accounts that already can't pay.  I think it was being discussed in regulatory committees ... (sorry for the vague term).

I worked for a collection agency for a while.  A short while.  I wasn't their type.  hahahah!  But the bottom line was, no matter what anyone working for them said on the phones, the entire point was to get some money from them now and maybe get some money from them later.  To the extent that they would "unknowingly" dun people who's accounts had been vacated by court order, or by completion of a payment agreement.  The philosophy was if someone on their list had EVER had an account in collections, they owed.

I know that you agree that you really owe this money, and that you intend to pay it.  But I think going to someone who is independent to advise you could be more helpful.  Someone who works for free at a library or church or something like that. Because even some of the "independent" credit counselors are just building themselves a portfolio of "clients" who will pay the counselor who will pay the creditors.  The counselor arranges agreements with all of your creditors, and I believe that sometimes it's just another chapter of a long story of never getting out of debt.

I still think it will turn around in time.  I AGREE about the panic and stress.  It is SO HARD to think effectively when I'm "in a spot."   And I, of course, have to take a very long (but not violent) temper tantrum break when things are about to turn ugly for me in the outside world!  It takes a long long time for me to adjust to the ugly new reality of what I must cope with! So I piss and moan, and bitch, and call everybody a criminal, and then I have to take a lot of naps for a while, and then I think my life is so so so fucked up that I'm not going to like what happens next, no matter what it is.

My own experiences so far are that it resolves in one of two ways:  something I'm not controlling happens that makes the problem go away (and often I forget about it, and don't even consider how to make sure it never happens again!)

OR, Finally comes the horrible day when I have to go to some office, or write some crappy check that I really never wanted to send in the direction of some particular person, problem, or other thing, or I have to submit to a PROCESS of some kind, some process that I just have to show up for and then all the (let's call them assholes) who are in charge of processing my process will just take control of my life for several hours, days, or weeks.  (These experiences become exaggerated in my imagination.)

    And then another branching area:  either the process happens to me, everything is over, and I go on about my business and eventually forget about it OR
    the first processor in my process looks like a human being to me and I go easy on him or her.  And then the doors open, the paths become apparent, sometimes there is a money expenditure involved, and once in a while, it's more like I MYSELF get a valuable prize rather than the horrible kick in the pants I was predicting and dreading.

One thing I keep remembering is:  it never makes sense to kill yourself because you want to be happier.  As far as I know.  No one who killed themself has reported back as to whether the problems were solved thusly.

imaginary atomic diffusion patterns

My cat found an old raggedy toy that my recently deceased dog favored for more than a decade.  I looked for this specific toy before we buried our doggie last month. 

And never found it.  My cat, this particular one of my cats.plural, was a bit parented by my dog two years ago, and they seemed to have a special affection for one another.

I never know what my surviving pets think when one of them "goes missing."  I sometimes have a tiny wake, i.e. display of the remains, when the end has come, that they may see their companion in his or her final state.  I neglected to do so this past November, when our 15-year-old dog died at the end of a long, violent seizure, followed by some hours of veterinary attention that did not revive him.

I miss him.

Anyway, my cat found the bedraggled, yet still gaily-colored "Lobister" toy and was carrying it about.  I am sure that my old puppy's saliva scent is still all over that toy.  I will wait a long time before I wash it.

I said to the cat "You must be able to smell our puppy all over that lobister.  We all miss him."

I know nearly all of him is still under the ground out back.  But perhaps some of the atoms from our old cats now long buried have made the way through the soil into traveling bugs and worms, or up through the tall tall pine via the roots.  Perhaps some atoms of Greykin, Thanksgiving, and Chamois are emitted as scent from a pine needle, or glistening in the sap on this sunny, cold day. 

Every so often, perhaps I breathe an atom of one of them in and then out.  Is that how it happens sometimes that I feel as if they are so near?