What should I do?

[DAL011]

Hello all,

I am a 20-something year old, College Student who lives at home. I don't own a car or a home, and dont plan on buying either in the forseable future. A creditor just filed a Writ of Garnishment and took all the money that was in my checking account (~$200.) They state that I owe them ~$12,000 for that one particular account. In total I believe I owe about ~$50,000 in credit card debt. What should I do? Would it be easier to just file for bankruptcy? Or try and find a solution with all the creditors? I do not work but just want the harrasment to stop and not have to worry with them trying to garnish any other accounts in the future.

[grassfeeder]

wow, that's quite the bill for only a 20-year old.  I'm not going to judge though, we have all had our issues.

Do you work?  if so, what is your average monthly take home pay?  I'm going to assume that it's not a lot given your age and the fact that you're a college student.  At least not enough to even come close to settling thsoe debts.

Chapter 7 may not be a bad decision.  You're young enough to when you really start to have life be real, you have had time to rebuild and not have it effect you much, or at least not as much.

The other thing is - I think you have to sit down and figure out how at 20, you ran up a tab that high and see what steps you can take to make sure there isn't a repeat performance.

[DAL011]

I agree, I was young and foolish when this happened and have vowed to not let this happen again. I am in my mid-20's at the moment, and this happened when I was 18-19 years old.

I currently do not work and live at home and live basically from the financial aid refunds I get. So repayment would be very hard to do. I was considering chapter 7 before coming on this forum but thought I should ask before meeting with an attorney to see what, if any, other options were available to me.

[shols44]

Don't want to judge either but how did you pile up 50K between 18 and 19? You couldn't have had income to warrant that kind of credit extension 2 years after high school right? You need to chart the path that got you here and learn from it.

In any case, I think you should be resigned to filing Chap 7. There's no way you can enter re-payment while actively being a student. You also want to do this before you graduate college, especially if you are in your final year. I'm not sure what your job prospects are, but you want to minimize the chances that you earn sufficient income to fail the means test. If you are already being garnished, you are on the clock to file or your next student loan refund will disappear from your bank account as well. 

You should be able to rebuild your credit fully by the time you need it for marriage, house, kids, cars etc. 

Now if you expecting to finish college and land a 100k job, with no kids, no bills etc then by all means, mount an aggressive repayment campaign but this is likely unrealistic.