Paying off Collection Agencies
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| Sun, 12-19-2004 - 5:58pm |
I am needing some advice. I am a 22 year old college student with about $16,000 worth of credit card debt. I go school full-time and work part-time in the state of IN. My take home pay after taxes is $600/month. I have to pay for rent $275, electric $78, cable $10.60, and phone $45, gas for car $80/month, and food. I get back some loan money from school each semester. Last semester I recieved about $3000. I took the money and bought school books, paid my rent from Aug to Dec, paid a backed up cell phone bill $248. I took the leftover money and put in my bank account and used it to pay my other bills and expenses. I had to do a internship this semster of 120 hours so my hours at work went from 25 to 10 taking my paycheck down from $150/wk to $60/wk. Major ouch! I have went to an atty and talked about bankruptcy. He said that he would accept a payment plan so I paid him $50 that day to retain him for a chapter 7. I don't want to file bk. I have checked into several debt settlement and management companies that I was refered to but they wanted too much money- like $400/month. Almost all of my credit cards are in collections and have been charged off. They are all closed accounts and I am not using any of them. I purchased Dave Ramsey's book Total Money Makeover. I am not completly through with it but he talks about not filing bk. I know I haven't finished the whole book but it makes me feel like there might possibly be some hope for me that I can pay off this debt on my own. My problem is that I am mainly dealing with collection agencies and I don't know if I can work out a payment plan with and how much more time I have left-if I decide against bk to pay them before they sue me. I hate to file bk because I will be done with school in about a year and a half and my income will increase a lot more. If I decide to try and pay my creditors does anyone have suggestions on who I should pay-the orginal creditor or the collection agency? I have heard the original creditor but I want to be sure. If anyone any suggestions please let me know!! I have 12 cedit cards and here is the list of my debt:
1. Capitol One : $1563.00- charge off
2. Capitol One: $1419.00- 180 days late
3. Citicards: $4271.00- charge off
4. Citicards: 985.00- charge off
5. Citicards: $289.00- 150 days late
6. Citicards: $807.00- late 150 days
7. Dell: $1448.00-charge off
8. Household bank: $1121.00- charge off
9. US bank: $1640.00- charge-off
10.Wal-Mart: $407.00- late 180 days
11. WFNNB/Maurices: $1373.00- charge off
12. Zales: $1320.00- charge off

I'm unfortunately experienced in this particular area!