Jen’s Journey

MAXED OUT - Movie/Documentary

So has anyone seen this? I finally got to watch it yesterday and it is somewhat distrubing. Two young college children killed themselves over credit card debt. And an older lady killed herself as well when she found out her husband was going to pull their credit reports, she didn’t want him to discover her 47K in CC debt. These people saw no way out, and if you watch the show and see the collection agents on the show I’m sure you’ll figure out why, the way these collection agents see this as a “game” and use info so then they have the “power” and calling friends/relatives etc, this is just obscene. I’m sure these 3 people were dealing with some of these types of people and they felt they had no other choice but to commit suicide. Now I’m sure not all agents are like the ones on the show, but just from reading personal experiences on lots of forums from different people a lot of these CA’s are horrible! My mission with this blog, and my journey is more than ever this - THERE IS HOPE, AND THERE IS A WAY OUT OF IT! And here is my threat to the bad collection agents out there, WATCH OUT! BECAUSE WE ARE NOW WATCHING YOU! I will be documenting every law you break and when you do, I will be sueing YOU. And as more and more people become informed and know their rights and what your not allowed to do they will be after you as well. So wise up already! You can still accomplish your job without threats of jail, using fear, embrassement, harrasement and illegal pratices.

And to anyone reading this blog - if you feel there is no way out, you post a comment and I will respond! There are forums and phone #’s and people out there that can and will help you. Debt is only debt, you can get into it and out of it, but you only have one life and you can’t get it back.

There is always hope!

Ok - now on to my other Debt stuff:

Well it’s the new year and what better way to start of the new year by settling one of my accounts! Well already had the settlement agreement but I just scheduled my final payment $3800 to be paid on Jan 3rd! So once this clears (and it will I have the funds there already) I should receive my letter that it’s settled about 10 days after that. Feels good to have two cards down, now just two left! yeah!

So thought everyone might find this interesting - my credit score was originally about 660 or so before all this happened, of course I couldn’t get a loan to refi my house or anything because of our Debt to income ratio and because we have other rental properties, etc. So that also started us down this path, anyway, we haven’t been making any payments toward our primary house in about 5 months, we are still waiting to hear back from the lender, I just spoke with them on Friday and they said they will have an answer for us in about 4-5 weeks, crazy but I think they are actually trying to re-modified our loan which is a good thing, anyway, back to my credit score - 660 a few months ago, I stopped paying 4 credit cards and we have the 2 house payments (1st and 2nd) that are showing up 120 days late. Last week my credit score was 479, then just yesterday my score jumped 59 points!! My score is now 538! Of course not good, but it jumped that much just because the previous card I settled now shows up on our report as “settled” “Paid”. Wow, that many points for just the one card! and our house payments other CC’s are still showing late! But I guess it means yes you can increase and improve/repair your credit score. It will be interesting to watch our score and debt to income change as we go through this process. Also - my husbands credit did the same thing, as these cards are in both our names, his went up 59 points as well. Not that I need a credit score now, but seeing it increase is alittle exciting!

This entry was posted on Tuesday, January 1st, 2008 at 2:31 pm and is filed under