Have settled 4 cards, done!

Can you talk about how many days late for each, did you talk to them often, call them or answer calls ? Did you speak to people at the normal numbers or were these special departments ? Did you get offers in mail or did you bring settlement up ?

Sure. I am not very good at taking notes so I don't remember exact days but I can give you ideas. I suggest being better note takers than me :)
I answered calls I would say every couple weeks or so. I never called a special number (except I tried to call a number for FIA that was posted here but it was too late and sent to collections). So I just talked to the people that called. For one of my citi accts, it was already on a hardship plan and I guess when that happens it is already in their recovery dept. It was interesting because they were taking payments out of my acct (my ok) for the hardship plan then I cancelled the future withdrawals, they didn't start counting the days late until 3 months or so of cancelled payments...if that makes sense. So that acct according to them was about 115 days late or so (although I was really later than that). I think I brought up settlement with them. They always tried to offer other plans then for that one I just said, ok I payed 30% for my other citi acct, I have that in three payments can we do that? She had to take it back to her manager then ok'd it.

The first citi I got an offer in the mail for 65 % and I just ignored it. Then I settled again around 120 days or so. They had offered payment plans and I just kept telling them I could not do it (true). Finally I just said I have this much for a settlement.

All of the calls pretty much went like that. FIA offered at some point 40%, eventually got down to 30%, believe them when they say they will charge off, they did and the CA is NOT fun to deal with, I wish we could have avoided that.

Same thing with Chase, 100 and some days, they were super nice.

Let me know if you have any questions.

Thanks for sharing Jill. Keep posting coz our members will take inspiration from you by learning how to do it all by yourself. Also you earn $ by en cashing your points for showing them the path :)

Take Care
Jason

not bad jill. just curious, did you have extra cash on hand to pay the settlements?

We acquired some cash as we went along. We paid off one cc with our tax return, had to cash out some retirement for two, had cash for another. I didn't want to cash out retirement but thought it was still best to get out of debt.