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.
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