“Credit Counseling” Archive
Feb
8
As I mentioned in an earlier post, the lawyer that had been handling my account was dropped my from legal plan and the case was closed. I decided not to go find another attorney and try and tackle things on my own; I will find an attorney again if I feel it is necessary.
In the meantime, I came across a site that I have found very useful for things ranging from disputing info on your credit report, negotiating with creditors and collection agencies and getting negative items removed from your credit report. The site is called CreditInfoCenter.com.
I should caution that why this site does have some useful information, it should not be construed as legal advice. If you find yourself in a debt situation that is very complicated you should probably try and find an attorney or consult with an accredited Consumer Credit Counseling organization. That said, if you are unable to afford an attorney this site provides some good self-help tools and letters.
Jun
14
My DMP wasn’t supposed to start until mid July so I figured that before then I would try once more to secure a better deal than the credit counseling agency was trying to secure for me. I AM GLAD I DID!
A five minute phone call–a pleasant one amazingly–to Citibank who holds nearly 23K of my credit card debt, resulted in a great deal. As I mentioned in an earlier post, Diners Club agreed many months ago to knock my debt down to 0%, paid over five years; Diners Club is a division on Citibank. Well, I’m happy to say that Citibank agreed to knock down my rates to 0% on two of the cards I have with them. AMAZING!
So, there does appear to be some light at the end of the tunnel. The Diners Club card and these two Citibank cards represent nearly 45% of my debt, so having a 0% interest rate on this much of my debt is a fantastic opportunity. The payments that I will owe to Citibank are more than $100 per month less than what the credit counseling folks were offering me. In addition, Citibank will report my account as ‘Closed by Consumer Request’ and will report my payments as paid as agreed. In addition, they will allow me to keep my Citibank AAdvantage card–it has a $1,000 limit–open for emergencies.
Now, adding in AMEX in with Citibank, which is currently being negotiated with my lawyer and I anticipate will be settled for 45-50% of the original sum, and these banks collectively represent nearly 66% of my debt. AMEX will be settled and paid within two months in my estimation, depending on how much back and forth negotiation. Citibank has given me 30 days before I need to make payments, i.e. no payments until July, so I will have some time to get some cash together for an emergency fund as well as completely paying off all of the smaller limit cards.
After being in such a serious funk over the past week, this was certainly some welcome news. I don’t plan on using the entire five year window to pay Citibank. I plan on using a debt snowball for anything above and beyond my budgeted payments/regular income.
