Diana_FL Posted April 3, 2008 Report Share Posted April 3, 2008 Good afternoon everyone and thanks in advance for your help. I live in Florida have about $ 18000 in unsecure debt. I'd been working hard just to send the minimun payment to my creditors(I work in a restaurant and make less than 250 a week) while going to school full time. After missing a couple of payments(not more than 15 days late) now my interest rate is 30.99 in 2 cards and 21-25 in the rest. With this rate I'm not even able to make the minimum payments and my accounts will go to collection soon. I'm desperate,I talked to my creditors and they say they are not able to lower the rate for at least 6 months, even though i'd been paying in time for years. I contemplated filling bankruptcy, but I'd been reading in this forum about the statute of limitation and in my state is 4 years. My question is, should I file bankruptcy now or wait 4 year for the statute of limitation to expire and hope they don't sue me? Thanks for reading Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
NASCAR_Devil Posted April 3, 2008 Report Share Posted April 3, 2008 Good afternoon everyone and thanks in advance for your help. I live in Florida have about $ 18000 in unsecure debt. I'd been working hard just to send the minimun payment to my creditors(I work in a restaurant and make less than 250 a week) while going to school full time. After missing a couple of payments(not more than 15 days late) now my interest rate is 30.99 in 2 cards and 21-25 in the rest. With this rate I'm not even able to make the minimum payments and my accounts will go to collection soon. I'm desperate,I talked to my creditors and they say they are not able to lower the rate for at least 6 months, even though i'd been paying in time for years. I contemplated filling bankruptcy, but I'd been reading in this forum about the statute of limitation and in my state is 4 years. My question is, should I file bankruptcy now or wait 4 year for the statute of limitation to expire and hope they don't sue me? Thanks for reading SOL is the amount of time a creditor has to legally sue you for a defaulted account. Bankruptcy discharges debt and a creditor cannot sue you when you are under bankruptcy protection. There's a lot more to it than that. For more info, read the stickies in the Bankruptcy forum. To me though, $18000 just doesn't really sound like enough to contemplate filing bankruptcy over but that's just me. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Robert Nashville/Savannah Posted April 3, 2008 Report Share Posted April 3, 2008 I hope some of the people who think credit crds are such a blessing read your post.I'm sorry for what you are going through - I've been there and done that.Having said that, I would encourage you not to pull the "Bankruptcy" trigger too quickly - your real problem here is a lack of income - get that up and this problem becomes at least manageable.Maybe you need to sell something...or even if you had to stop school for a while to take a job that pays a decent wage it might well be worth it and ultimately far better than a BK could be for you...mind you I"m not talking about stopping school forever or taking a no-future job long-term to solve a short-term problam; just doing so long enough to get bck on track. 1 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
chele444 Posted April 3, 2008 Report Share Posted April 3, 2008 I agree with Robert on the school. I don't know about your college, but many have evening, weekend and online courses that can make it much easier to get a second job, or a better paying day job. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
m2aclark Posted April 4, 2008 Report Share Posted April 4, 2008 I hate to say this because I have tried to just asisst and not swing anyone towards any method of debt help, but you might want to consider settlement. Aside from that, here are a few things to answer or ask yourself. Are you married? In Fl the wages of the head of household cannot be garnished. (there would have to be a judgment before that anyway, and there is plenty of info here to help you stall or possibly beat a judgment)Do you see this as a long term (more than 3 year) problem? I mean the level of income, not the debt. It's not going to vanish.Are you disciplined enough to save the funds instead of spending if you did stop making the minimums?Who are your creditors? I can fill you in on who is agressive in Fl. If nothing else it helps give you more information to make the best decision for you.I would stay away from BK, but with your income being so low, you might qualify for a Ch7 that would get rid of it. The cleanup from that is not going to be as easy as trying to settle the debts. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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