Panicedinpgh

Perhaps. What do you estimate your home is worth? What do you think you can get out of it in a refi?

 

And if you take out a mortgage, will you be able to pay it back? You said not enough income, I don't know if that's because of all the debts or if you're underemployed. You don't want to risk losing the house.

Now, if you can afford the mortgage payments AND you can keep from getting back into debt, you should consider it. But if you're one of the people who can't keep from spending money, I'd be cautious. You don't want to end up with a mortgage and another $100K in unsecured debts.

 

Hedwig's response boils down to the old saying that if you are in a hole then for Heaven's sakes stop digging and is, of course, absolutely correct. Refinancing your home to pay off those debts is nothing more than digging your hole even deeper. I think that refinancing to pay off that mountain of debt is something you should not even consider doing. Selling off assets of any kind to help pay off some or all of the debt is a good idea if you can do so without taking a huge loss on those items but that usually isn't the way it works. Filing formal bankruptcy is often considered to be the way to handle such problems but one thing that people don't stop to consider is that first of all bankruptcy was never intended to be a way for people to avoid paying their debts. Bankruptcy was invented as a way for defunct corporations to settle their estates much in the same way probate courts settle the estates of natural persons after their demise. Then lawyers came into the picture as they always seem to do and turned the bankruptcy courts into a way for natural persons to escape their debts too and of course at great profit to themselves.

Then the banks finally got tired of that nonsense and got the new bankruptcy laws passed making it much more difficult for people to file bankruptcy. In my opinion they should have outlawed bankruptcy entirely for the natural person but if they had done that the hue and cry would have been deafening to put it mildly. The lawyers would have been screaming their heads off and the people would have joined them en-mass.

So you owe more than $100K and can't see how to take care of your problem so BK sounds like it might be the way to resolve your problems. That it might be but it isn't the only way by any means. I have a friend here in OKC who had 6 million in debts and he resolved them all without going BK. He used informal bankruptcy and paid them nothing at all. Yes, it can be done and more people are learning how to do that all the time. Most of those who choose informal bankruptcy over the formal variety end up getting their credit reports in pristine condition and getting paid for their trouble as well. So can you.