Money Card

I would like to share a little story about my experience with credit card debt in hopes that it helps the reader take advantage of what I wish someone had told me before my own debt got the best of me.

My credit card debt has been haunting me for years.  After college, I ignored it for a while during an extended period of unemployment.  Naturally, my interest rate sky-rocketed after I failed to make several monthly payments and my debt increased to an even more unrealistic amount.  After they closed down my overdrawn credit card account, I tried setting up a payment plan with the bank, but ironically, every time I sent them money to initiate the plan, they decided I was not making enough money to qualify for the plan after all.  So then I tried going through every credit card debt consolidation company I could find that seemed reputable, but couldn’t find one that would give me a low enough interest rate to satisfy me, considering their claims to offer as little as 1 or 2 percent interest, which turns out to be totally off base when it comes time to seal the deal.

What I didn’t realize was that after my credit card debt remained unresolved for long enough, the bank would start trying to make deals with me, where if I paid my debt off all at once, they would accept a much lower amount than I originally owed.  Month after month, they sent me letters with an increasingly low bill until eventually, it was less than half of what I actually owed.  I still couldn’t afford to pay them, so they sold my debt to a collection agency, which now wants about three times as much as the bank was eventually willing to settle for.

Now that I know this is how it works, I wish I had never tried to make any further payment plans with the bank.  After my initial failed attempt, in stead of continuing to send them payment after payment to initiate each new plan, I should have saved that money which did nothing to bring down my debt, and paid the bank when they were at their most desperate point of bartering with me.  All they did was take my money over and over, pretending it would go towards my balance, but it just went to interest and fees that kept accruing while they denied each new plan.  So when it comes to overdrawn credit card accounts that have already been canceled, my best debt advice is to wait until they come crawling to you, making more and more reasonable offers, until they claim it is truly their final offer before it goes to collections, and then pay off your debt with all the money you saved in the mean time by not making futile payments.