New here and going through a ROUGH time...

[Anonymous]

Greetings Board Members,

I am a first time poster (long time lurker) and have admired some of your success stories and constant ability to cheer each other up during hard times and figured this was a good time to finally post my deepest and darkest moment on here and hopefully get some advice… So here is the story, the short of it at least…

I have 12 open and up to date lines of credit, all of which have never had a history of late payments or anything of the like, they total out to $17,675. Most of them are at or close to their maxmimum limits and some are at 0% for the initial year. I have been able to manage minimum payments for the last 3 to 4 months or so that total around $500, that is not my biggest concern obviously.

My big concern is I have 6 online loans that total $68,956 and are literally about to put me in a hole that I don’t think I have ever experienced in my life. Long story short, I had some shortcomings with my current position at my employer (demotion) and I take care of my mother full time and have been too prideful and embarrassed to either ask my wife (married 1 year) for assistance and do not have the guts to reach out to my estranged father (who left my mother a couple years ago) or my sister who lives on the other side of the country and is on disability herself. I am trying to come to odds with the notion of filing my second BK, my first was discharged in July of 2004 when I was a dumb kid who made some bad decisions… Now I am 34 years old and facing similar decisions.

I can tell you that my disappointment in myself has reached an all-time low and it seems my brand new marriage is taking the brunt of it, I came clean with my wife over the weekend and she is completely at a loss but remains somewhat supportive.

I want to explore my options but need to cut these lenders out first, so I decided to pull the plug on my direct deposit and am contemplating closing my checking account with wells fargo and transitioning my DD to my old student B of A checking account (of which I current am overdrawn and have an overdraft history with). I plan on continuing my credit card payments and solely cutting off my relationships with the lenders, they are Avant, Lendmark, Lending Point, Borrowers First, Net Credit and Personify… Again this is solely so I can have some time to look at my options and continue making minimum credit card payments until then, I plan on consulting with a lawyer regarding a possible BK and have already consulted with a couple of debt settlement agencies, so my question is… Does anybody have experience with cutting off online lenders? Do you all recommend any particular debt settlement agencies? For some odd reason National Debt Relief gets rave reviews and also what should I expect a lawyer to tell me? Has anybody had experience with closing their checking account to avoid the direct ACH transactions? Should I even close my account or have my account number changed?

I want to start over but I also don’t want to lose the relationships I have established with my credit cards but see no end in sight if I continue paying them AND the online lenders.

Any and all help is greatly appreciated and apologies for the long winded message.

Also for reference my scores are as follows...

Experian - 607

Transunion - 612

Equifax - 626

[Anonymous]

I would say that if you cut off those lenders you probably can expect them to come after you via wage garnishment.  I think I'd call them all first and try to work something out.

[Anonymous]

Thanks for tbe reply... Can they garnish my wages without actually filing a lawsuit against me?

[StartingOver10]

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@Anonymous wrote:
Thanks for tbe reply... Can they garnish my wages without actually filing a lawsuit against me?

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No, they have to file against you first. 

You don't say what your current income is, but it sounds like you have an untenable situation right now. You have to do what is best for you. Have you worked out a budget? It might show that you don't have the resources to pay (from your post) so it may be better for you to just file Bk again. You are talking about almost $90k of debt. 

[budwiser]

I just went through a BK. I am probably not very good at giving advice. But the first thing I would do is to take a look at your assets. Do you own a home, auto or have personal property totalling over $26,000? If the answers are no, then BK is the way to go. As far as relationships with these lenders, after the BK you can start over pretty quickly. My BK was discharged in August 2016 and I already got approved for a Kohls card ($300) limit. But I was stoked. Starting over again and this time paying with good old cash.

[empressj]

That's awesome you were able to get a Kohls card. I burned them in bk for approx 1k, so they may not let me back in. I started off with $300 and received generous CLI. I was one month behind so they might consider me again :/

[missy42]

The first thing I would do is change DD to a bank/credit union that have no debt who will not be IIB.  Then stop all payments, hire a lawyer and file for BK.  No use in cutting off some, cut them all off.  If you have a home/car that you are going to reaffirm keep paying that but otherwise stop all other credit payments.  IMO that's the best thing to do.  My lawyer had me stop all payments, I'm waiting to file sometime early next year.  Updated all my creditors with home phone, gave them all my lawyers info so I get no calls.  Its a slow process but I have peace of mind for now.