My (ongoing) Chapter 7 story

Long story short: I racked up a bunch of credit card debt over a long period of time (~10 years), was slowly paying it down, then lost job suddenly and was out of reliable work for 2 years. I've been working for the last year and a half but my debts went to collection long ago. Once I started working again I paid off all the little debts, but remaining are the two big CC ones, a $9,000 that ballooned to $14,000 with interest and penalties, and another for $8,000 that ballooned to about $11,000 with interest and penalties. While I managed to arrange a payment plan the interest is still running and after making payments for over a year my balance has not gone down at all; the original balance on the first has only gone down $120 even though I've paid them almost $5000 by now.

My monthly net income is only $2200. I don't own a car or a house or a yacht or anything like that. I don't own anything at all really, with the exception of my clothes, my guitar (I don't even own an amp for it anymore), and my year-old laptop. My credit is already total shit. Basically I have absolutely nothing to lose and everything to gain.

I spoke to a lawyer this morning and she emailed me a bunch of forms and papers to look over and fill out. I will have to put this off a month or so until I can come up with the fees and all, but this is going to happen.

I'll keep updating this as things happen. Today is day #1.