Need to find out hot to settle debts myself

You and me both. From what I have read it seems to be you stop making payments to create a hardship situation and spook your creditors. After about 4-6 months you start negotiating with them to get the prinicipal down to $.50 on the dollar or less. In the meantime, you save as much money as you can so you have some lump sums to send them.

My concern is that 4-6 months is not going to be long enough for me to put together the thousands I will need to offer a lump sum. Can someone tell me how what kind of structure credit card companies accept for the pay-off at that point? Back to monthly payments? Several lumps over a few months?

Also, I will likely negotiate with my biggest creditor first and try to strike a deal. BUT I have 4 other credit card companies that are going to be beating on me which I may not be able to offer anything to for as much as 12 months. What happens if I wait that long before negotiating with them?

help?!

We had Bank of America, CitiBank, Chase, and HSBC. We chose to go with a debt settlement co. Even after we signed up, we had 2nd thoughts about that and tried to strike a deal with the companies. We had no luck, but i know that others have. So i guess it's what works best for each person. I do not have the nerves to deal with this on my own. I cry and get upset just talking to them on the phone, and my husband gets mad. Neither is helpfull.
I will tell you that HSBC is a bugger to deal with . We had a suzuki 4 wheeler that we could no longer make the payments on. It went from the special 2 year deal of 50.00 per month (i know my idiot husband did that one) up to 200.00 per month. That happened after we had already defaulted on our other credit cards. They were relentless. We tried to offer 1/2 of what we owed to settle. They would not take it. We tried for about 2 months. All the while, we were getting calls from a different dept. at HSBC saying that we were avoiding their calls and not dealing with them. But we were, talking to someone every 2-3 days or so trying to work something out. THEN they turned us over to the horrible collection agency. I can't remember the name right now, but there is lots of bad stuff on this site about them. They called my home, they called my husbands cell phone, and they called my supervisor at work multiple times a day. Then i sent then a stop calling letter and they continued to call my home, cell phone, and supervisor at work. My husband called them again and they told him that the stop call letter did not pertain to my account. He told the guy that the letter they sent me says it does so stop calling. That is when we turned this account over to our debt settlement co. too. So much for trying on our own.

How many months behind are you in payments at this time, shah?

Shah,

My sympathies. That must be very difficult to go through!

I'm going through a similar thing--not because of a divorce, but because my pay was cut 70% in 2003, and in 2004, I lost my job. I'm being sued by Discover card right now for $8,000+ and I hope to settle with the lawyer they hired to bring the case against me. I've heard that Discover is very aggressive. So watch out for that one.

I also had an MBNA card and owed about $10,000 on it. They wasted no time in pursuing that arbitration crap and won the case hands down. So far, they've not become aggressive in pursuing collection.

Besides that, I had a Providian card, which I defaulted on in 2007 and so far they've not taken me to court or aggressively collected. I think I'll try to bargain with them before they do and see if they'll trim the bill down to a managable amount.

There are a lot of good resources on this site about settling with debt collectors. And here's a good source on freeadvice.com for settling your debt.

http://forum.freeadvice.com/debt-collections-84/how-negotiate-settlement-428587.html

You can get some good advice over there for free--just beware and be prepared for some flames if you post a question. Some of the lawyers who post there have attitude and are downright mean and childish.

Good luck with the divorce and debt settlemnt. :-)

Betty

I will not be any help, but hope to receive some advice for my own situation. Myhusband, (common-law), recently committed suicide, leaving be with 150,000.00 in debt that I had no idea about. There is nothing to show for it. I feel that the money was used for gambling. Balance transfers and cash advances were made on accounts we had together and even on ones in only my name without my knowledge. There is no way that I can afford the minimum monthly payments of close to $2,000.00. I have no idea what to d. I have been searching the internet and researching debt consolidation, settlement and bankruptcy. I talked to someone from a debt settlement company. They thought they could reduce the amount I owed to half, still having to pay 1,000.00 a month. This guy said that I probably can't file for bankruptcy because I make too much money, about 65,000.00 a year. That doesn't seem right to me. Does anyone know if it. i live in PA if that matters. My monthly expenses without the credit debt is about 3,000.00 a month. Now trying to make payments with only one paycheck is too much. Should I get a lawyer? I have already contacted companies that were in his name only and now they are sending collection notices to my house. Anyone know what I can do? Thanks in advance for any helpful advice. this is very overwhelming on top of everything else I am dealing with. Karen

shah 59,

Discover and Advanta will be your two most difficult too settle. Discover most likely will send the account to Zwicker and Associates for collection. Advanta has never really been very welcoming to settlements, but you can try.

Since MBNA was bought over by BoFa they have loosened up much, you can actually, if the funds are available settle with them for as much as 70% off in some cases.

HSBC has always hovered around the 50% off mark. You can negotiate these accounts yourself no need to spend extra $$$ on debt settlement companies.