HELP! Desperate! Not sure where to begin WARNING Long post!

Is that 10,000 in the hands of a third party collector or still with the credit card company. I would assume that it is charged off and with the collector if it has been 8 months. If you go to the home page hear you will find debt consolidation companies the are rated and listed by State. Send debt validation letters to all the collection agencies and and also letters demanding they cease contact. Do not give them your forwarding address. Pleas bear in mind that when the bottom feeders have you debt it has already been charged off. They have usually purchased it for pennies on the dollar. You really do not owe them the money. They want to collect as much as they can. Let the Debt Consolidator deal with them from your new state. Or do it yourself if you prefer. They want to make fast money and move on. Send them a real low settlement offer. But only if they properly validate your debts and find you at your new location. That could take months and give you the ability to save. A collector can't have anything removed from your credit report. That damage is already done. Do not believe anything they tell you. Get everything in writing.

I can help you with your debt. I am a debt analyst with a finance company her in Mesa Arizona.

... promotional post has been edited as per TOS -DebtCruncher

I had a similar situation going on from 3 years ago until this April. Back when I was in college, I had $12K worth of credit limits among 4 cards. And I was "responsible" then, only charged up what I could pay off in a month. Problem was, I was making $8.50/hour (a little over $1100/month), had $700 rent, a $200 car payment, and needed to take care of myself. When the credit card companies give you these cards, they don't tell you when you max them out, that the minimum payment jumps up to like $300-400 per month. So that's what happened - I ran into a few bumps, maxed the cards out, and between my cards the minimums were about $700/month. The $100 I could send them was like a slap in their face, I could send it off and the next day they would be calling wanting the rest. So, needless to say, I stopped paying them and evaded collection for about 2 years.

In 2005, I got a new job that paid me about 3x what I was previously making. And so with more pay, I started putting aside between $500-1000/month towards all my old delinquent debt.

Basically I started with my dad - he loaned me about $1800 for a new clutch on my car. Paid him off in Feb 2006. Then I had a $1800 medical bill that was in collections - settled with them for $1200 in May 2006. Then I started working on the credit cards... smallest credit card first (Am-Ex had a $1300 balance). When I saved up $1300 in Oct 2006, I called them to see what they would settle for. They settled for about $800, so I took the remaing $500 I would have paid them, and put it toward my next biggest credit card. That was Chase ($1800 balance). So it took my about 3 more months so save up $1800 --- but in the mean time Resurgence bought the account and filed a lawsuit against me. Yet they violated about 6 counts of fdcpa that I had documented, so I sent them my proof and an offer to settle outside of court for $1100 and they did in Jan 2007. Now I had $700 left over that I put toward my biggest credit card (Bank One = $6500.). Took me until April 2007 to save up that much, but I did. Called them in April, somehow they thought I had been dead since 2004 (go figure, if I'd left it alone they would have never come after me, but since I called I woke up the beast.) Anyway, they settled for $4900 out of the original $6500.

All in all, I paid off over $12K in about 13 months. But at the same time, I wasn't spending a dime on anything that I didn't need outside of basic survival. Now I'm in the clear, have just one credit card through Discover and I'm back to paying it off every month. My credit score was about 492 in 1/2006 and has jumped up to 652 since then and still rising.

The best advice I can say is make a plan for yourself and stick with it. Start saving up and pay them off one by one. If you can keep the collectors off your back for a while until you can save up, it's definitely easier to settle with them all in a lump sum versus making a payment plan - you can usually get them down to 50-60% if you go that route. I hate to say "avoid their calls" but that's what I did and eventually they stopped for a while, and it gave me a chance to save up. Once you wake up the beast, they will want their money, so I'd say don't call them if you don't have it ... unless they're on the virge of suing you. I personally wouldn't advise getting a debt consolidation, because that is stuff you can do yourself.