old bills

Submitted by gballard_610 on Sat, 05/08/2010 - 17:54
Forums

I have alot of old bills that i can't pay off.should i file bankruptcy.I wont to get my credit back right but its hard.You cant get nothing. I wont to buy a house. WHAT SHOULD I DO?..

you can sit down with a non profit credit counseling agency. NOT one of those scams where they promise to cut your debt in half.

http://www.nfcc.org/

this is required by the bankruptcy court and it will help you decide what to do.

Sat, 05/08/2010 - 19:16 Permalink

The first thing you need to do is to pull your credit report and see what is on it. That will be a really good starting point. No matter how overwhelming it is nothing is undoable. Set some goals, start with what you can handle and little by little it will dwindle away.

You have to look at things realistically. If you don't have the skills to handle the bills then maybe you should take the credit report to a counselor and come up with a plan. But I am confident that if you take a hard look at it, even if you have to act like it is someone elses, you will come up with a way to tackle it.

You have a whole forum here to come to and to ask questions and advice.

What are you thoughts? your fears?

Sat, 05/08/2010 - 20:50 Permalink

Hi ballard,

First check the status of these accounts on your credit report. Can you tell how many bills are there, and the total amount of your outstanding debt? If you can't afford to pay off the outstanding debt amount, you can try settling those debts. Try to negotiate a settlement with the company or the collection agency. Debt settlement will lower your outstanding debt amount. Generally with a settlement the debt amount gets reduced by 40-60%.

Debt settlement can lower your score initially, because these are old accounts. When you start making the payments, the lates on these these accounts will be considered to be relatively new, and thus your score will be hurt.

Thanks,

Aaron

Mon, 05/10/2010 - 07:31 Permalink