How to end CCCS early & not damage rating

If you can no longer keep up with your commitments then you have little choice but to somehow come up with a more workable reality. Of course it may mean eating lots more Ramen Noodles or cutting back somehow. But it might well be that no matter how much you cut back you still couldn't free up enough cash to help out. If that is the case then you might as well forget about your stellar credit for a while no matter how much that may pain you. Of course you might consider stopping CCCS because they are costing you money that you could be putting towards your debt. Another thing to consider about CCCS is that while you may feel they are doing a great job for you what will they do if one of your creditors gets tired of waiting for their money and files a lawsuit against you? I can tell you what they will do for you but you might want to ask them just to confirm what I say. They will tell you that they can't help you and that you need to seek legal advice which is itself bad advice because you won't be able to afford a lawyer and a lawyer wouldn't be able to help you even if you could. Hiring a lawyer would just be throwing money down the tubes because the best a lawyer could do is try to reach some settlement which would result in a judgment against you. That would fix your stellar credit for about the next 7 years or so.

Then once one creditor filed a suit against you and started garnishing wages or grabbing all the money in your bank account the rest would be sure to follow suit.

Once that process starts it is all down hill from there unless you learn how to put a stop to it before it really gets going good. You can learn how to do that right here on this board. It will take lots of study but you can find the right information right here. You don't have to look any further.

Another solution is finding more income to bolster what you presently have. How to do that can also be found right here on this board. Today it is possible to make excellent money on the internet but you have to stay away from most of the affiliate marketing stuff because you simply can't get rich playing the other man's game. I've looked at almost every internet marketing scam out there and I have yet to find even one that will do anything but help keep you broke but in spite of that there is great money to be made on the internet. This very board will teach you how to do that too. All you have to do is study the entire board, not just the postings we make here. This board has to be making it's owners fine money or it probably wouldn't be here.
The first step to learning how to resolve your problems lies in thinking outside the box. Once you do that then you are well on the way to resolving your problems so best you get started right away.

Let me give you a couple of examples of thinking outside the box. There is a lady who lives on a farm somewhere. The farm apparently has lots of cows because she goes out in her pasture and gathers up all the dried up cowpies, takes them into her workshop and encases them in plastic. Then she cuts a hole in the middle and puts a clock in the hole and sells cowpie clocks on ebay and other places. She has been doing it for years and probably makes other things that I don't know about as well. Maybe she makes cowpie ashtrays too. (LOL)

Another lady who also lives on a farm goes out and gathers up all the tumbleweeds that get caught up in her fences. She takes them into her workshop and sprays them with plastic and sells them for christmas trees and other decorations. She sells untold numbers of them to the movie producers who use them in their western movie sets. Both ladies advertise on ebay.

I've gone to flea markets and I find people who buy stuff on ebay and sell it in their booths on flea markets. I know a man who used to buy scrap computers from Government surplus auctions by the truck load. He also used to buy them at state surplus sales and from hospitals and other places who constantly upgrade their computer systems. He attended sales from all over the U.S. and brought them to his warehouse where he scrapped them out and sold the tin and hauled the circuit boards to a big recycler who grinds them up into little bitty pieces and ships the ground up bits to Mexico where they separate out the gold and other valuable metals. He made so much money he got a contract to scrap out an old pipeline that was made out of aluminum tubes 8 inches around and 40 feet long. Really heavy stuff with 1 inch thick sidewalls. He got it all for free but he had to dig it out of the ground so he bought bulldozers and cranes to do that with and a couple of semi trucks to haul the stuff to the scrap yard with. He made a killing, sold the equipment and retired. He started his business just driving around town picking up old computers people set out on their curbs for the trash man to haul away. He was a junker but he made a fortune doing it.

There is always a way to make a buck if you just don't give up.

 

It seems to me that you missed the point entirely. While credit card companies do lower interest rates once in a while for consumers in dire straits it is comparatively rare. Federal law requires that credit card companies keep their minimum payment demands at about 2% of the total indebtedness of each customer in order to get their debt paid off sooner than before the law was passed. Prior to the passage of that law many card companies only asked that consumers pay off the monthly interest each month to keep their cards in good standing. Customers who only sent in the required minimum payments would never pay on the principal and thus would never get out of debt. Things are very different since that change and the new wave of defaults. They don't lower interest rates now as easily as was once the case. They are also quicker to file lawsuits now than before, often within only a few months. So if you want to avoid lawsuits you will have to make larger payments to your creditors. Same is true whether you are using CCCS or not. If you want to pay off quicker you will have to increase your income or reduce your expenses or both.

Getting rid of CCCS is one option if indeed that will reduce your expenses and increase the amounts you can pay to each card but it also increases the risk that you will be sued. Rocking the boat when you are in deep water full of sharks is never a good idea so increasing your income by whatever means is about the best solution even if you have to become a spare time junk man to do it.

Using a credit counseling service was a bad idea even if it works because future lenders will see it in the same light as a BK. It sends a signal that you can't manage your own financial affairs and have to run for help to do it for you. I think that getting rid of them now would also be a bad idea because it may greatly increase the chances of getting sued. Creditors are not likely to see dropping them as a good thing for them. They are likely to see dropping CCCS as a sign you can't even keep up the monthly payments you agreed to and will be prone to turning to collection agencies and the courts to get their money. Therefore increasing your income somehow may be your only choice and should not be overlooked.

Sling hamburgers at McDonalds, selling stuff on ebay, picking up junk, working in a convenience store, whatever it takes to get the job done is the best alternative.[/quote]In my mind, the worst is over, its been quite a struggle to make it this far, but not sure if I can keep it up like this, to the finish line....just wondering if I can delay the finish line a bit, without losing what I've worked hard to gain back.[/quote]That's not too likely.

That sounds good but is likely to get you into one or more legal battles because none of them are likely to want to wait their turn which might be months or years down the line. That's likely to be about as workable as the old joke about the guy that put all his monthly bills in a hat and pulled out the one getting paid that month, informing the rest that they didn't make the draw that month and if they object to that he won't even put their bill in the hat next month.

I don't think you did but that's water over the dam now. I think rocking the boat now is the worst thing you could do. I think the best thing you can do now is live with your decision, good, bad or ugly. If it works don't fix it.

 

Do you have a contract with them? Does it have any termination language in it?

You're right, paying on each card is not the most effective way to pay off debt. The most effective way (which I recommend if you sever your relationship with CCCS) is to pay the minimum on every card EXCEPT the one with the highest interest rate. Pay everything you can on that card. When it's paid off, add what you were paying on it to the miniumum on the next highest card, and pay that until it's paid off. Any extra money ALWAYS goes to the highest interest rate. Keep a spreadsheet that you update every month with the balance and interest rate for each card. The highest rate card could change, so you'd switch all the extra money to whichever one is highest. Watch your total balance go down each month to get that feeling of satisfaction.

You could try to get some part-time work, maybe something you could do from home. Either use that money to pay this down or build a little emergency fund for if you do get laid off.

I was stuck with about $77K in unsecured debt after a divorce. Most of it is paid off. I worked three or four jobs sometimes. A lot of them were "one shot" where I could do some spreadsheet work or something for a small business. I also learned to live without cable, drive cars until they fall apart, read newspapers and magazines at the library instead of buying them (before the internet) and many other things. But everyone has different priorities, what worked for me may not be good for you.

You've come a long way. You'll make it.

 

supergee,

Check your contract with them, because they are a "non profit" you maybe able to end the relationship. If you do immediately contact the card company's and find out exactly how much they were getting per month and how much (less) they would be willing to accept then pay the minimum on 3 of the accts and pay more on 1 until they are done.