Debt Questions & Answers

DH & I have about $80,000 in Credit Card debt. We know it's there but really feel like we have nothing to show for it. The CC Companies have all lowered our available balances to just about what we owe already and have all raised our minimum payments drasticaly in the last few months.

We have always paid on time and I have tried to pay a little over the minimum every month.  Since the companies have done this we are no longer able to pay the minimums.  This month I paid 1/2 the minimums on each card and we still barely paid our mortgage this month. The largest card we called the company and requested to have the minimum lowered back down ($199 difference) and they said if we paid the higher amount 1 month it will be lowered the next month but it only came down $25.

What happens next? How long can I continue to send them less then what is due without them freezing my accounts or sending us to collections?  Should we stop direct deposit on our pay checks and start using our daughters account to hide our money?

I'm really scared we will lose our house over this. Any advice would be great.

I'm no expert, I'm in the same boat as you.  But, I'd pay the mortgage religiously and not pay the unsecured/credit card debt.

I'm 100k in debt and just starting bankruptcy proceedings.  Paid everything on time until the last month or so, but just can't keep it going anymore.

I may not be much help in answering your question, but I think that if you don't want to lose your house, pay that bill first before paying any CC. DH and I are in a similar situation and will be filing Ch 7 BK in November(we had to wait because we had done some balance transfers earlier this year and our attorney advised waiting 6 months from the statement date) We will not be losing our house in the BK, we will keep that along with our 2 cars. It has to do with the fact that we don't have much equity in any of these things(that's how the attorney explained it)

I don't know if or when the CC would freeze your accts, are you still using the cards to meet monthly expenses like food and such? I would think they will eventually send you to collections or something of the sort but I don't know what the time frame is on that. If they have already lowered the limits and upped the monthly minimum, it may just be a matter of time before they completely close the acct.

GL to you. This is a hard situation to be in, but there are lots of ladies on here with great advice and I reccomend exploring all your options to see how to best handle this situation.

We filed for Chapter 7 in February 2008.  We were about $70,000 in unsecured debt.  We were able to keep our house.  We were slightly behind, but when we decided that we needed to file and wanted to keep the house, we were told by our lawyer to immediately stop making credit card payments and use the money to get our mortgage current.

Good luck and if you have any questions about my experience, please don't hesitate to ask.

Heather