nefarious napkin posted:

OK I always wondered about these organizations and whether or not they are scams. It's great to have a recommendation for one that is non profit! I actually spoke to a friend in the Credit Card industry, and he told me that I can just call and tell them I'm having troubles making my payments, and they will turn off interest for 3 months with no penalty. That's $400 saved that can go back to the debt. I'll give these guys a call first and see if they have any more advice!

This might be a silly question but it's something I've been thinking about that your post reminded me of. Really... how important is credit? It was driven into my head to protect my credit at all costs when I was younger, and so my rating is great. Never missed a bill or payment, my only hit is that my debt to available credit ratio is high.

There are these options like what Angry Pie outlined above, which is very similar to the Quebec Voluntary Deposit program, consumer proposals, etc etc. I also have friends who ended up in collections but in the end paid way less of their debt after negotiating with the creditors, which kind of makes me jealous. All of these hit your credit rating, but it's not like I'm buying a house or a car anytime soon. Is it worth it to protect my rating?

As a side note, it goes to show how used to ignoring this problem I am - I saw your $23K figure and cringed and thought "holy poo poo that's rough" and then remembered mine is much higher...