Quote:
Originally Posted by LuvNH
I never thought I would be doing this, but my attorney wants $600 per hour and $200 for phone call, so I am hoping someone can answer my query.
I have a granddaughter who is old enough to know better; however, she messed up big time. She has allowed herself and a boy friend to run up $20K in credit card debt on her cards. He has taken off and she cannot pay it off. She is talking bankruptcy.
Does anyone know what bankruptcy does to your life. Can you ever get a credit card again. Does it go on your employment info. Does it dog you forever.
I would prefer to do this through a pm rather than putting her private information on a chat line. Any information would be gratefully appreciated.
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Noooooooo! Please rethink the idea of bankruptcy. $20,000 looks like a fortune to her now, and she is no doubt under stress and probably embarrassed. . .
But this stuff happens all the time and usually to the nicest, kindest of women. She can handle it -- and then chalk it up to the cost of an education. She'll be OK, and she will never again fall for that type.
Right now, she is in the moment and thinking bankruptcy could be a quick fix that would give her an immediate clean slate. I don't know how long filing bankruptcy would follow her, but I think it could be longer and more costly than trying to clean up the mess herself -- as unwieldy as that idea probably sounds to her while she is in the throes of the emotional component of this.
Buying into "credit repair" can open another can of worms. I recently read an article titled "The High Cost of Bad Credit" in the
New York Times Magazine, dated June 7, 2023. (I pick up a Sunday NYT from time to time because I like to read a hardcopy paper once in a while. I read this article a few weeks ago. You can find it online with a Google of the title and paper, but it is behind a paywall. You should be able to read the whole thing though if you grab it on the first try.)
There are a lot of people in the "business" of credit repair who are scamming others who are in vulnerable situations. There are some who really do try to help, but they mostly charge, too, and finding one of those would not be easy........
I read the whole article (a long one) about what they do and it seemed to boil down to writing letters to the credit card companies. The letters they provided were basically boiler plate and she could do that herself. She should be able to find some info on how to give it a try. Seems like asking for a significant interest reduction might be the way to go. Worth trying, anyway.
My next thought is a long shot because I don't know if there are still such things as zero percent interest credit cards where she could transfer at least some of the debt. (Years ago, I advised someone to do this. They had been living high on the hog and were in excess of $50,000 in debt. They were able to transfer balances because they had been making their payments and had good credit scores. That is another weird thing about credit scores. If you don't borrow money, your score might not be as high as those who do and just make the payments.) If these cards still exist, she might be able to transfer. The zero percent was always for a very limited time, but it could help to make a dent in the dollars owed. She should see if this is a possibility. If she has been making payments, she might be able to do this -- if there is still such a thing as zero percent.
Something else that crossed my mind is that she should keep a very close eye on her credit because he no doubt has enough information to keep on using it.
This will not be easy, but she will feel better as she works her way through it.
(Now I will address the big elephant in the room: I know that interest-free or low-interest loans can sometimes be available from close relatives, but those can get messy, especially if there are other offspring. With such family loans, the lenders need to have signed paperwork (fwiw) and must never loan money they do not have or cannot afford to lose and certainly must never co-sign a loan. If a private loan is even on the radar (please do not comment) I think I would start with just a part and see how it goes, not loan the whole amount.
Well, I don't know if anything I have typed here can help. But please tell her not to be hard on herself. She is not the Lone Ranger in this one. Happens all the time. She will be fine and far more aware and can go around warning others.
(I wish there were a way that these good women could sue the puny b@llz off those losers who take advantage of them. . .Now that could be worth the cost of a lawyer. . . Damn, I shoulda gone to law school when I retired, relatively young. By now I could have been Pro-Bono Boomer with an airbrushed ad on the side of city busses.)
Boomer
PS: LuvNH, no need to respond to this with comments in another post. This is a very private matter for you and for her, and I respect that. Hug her and guide her. When she works through this, maybe with a combination of things suggested by others, and gets it all truly behind her, she will be tougher for it -- and she will recognize that type of guy immediately -- and will accept the fact that $20,000 was not too bad for the cost of an education these days.