Comments on: Do It Yourself Debt Consolidation

By: Rosemary

Rosemary — Wed, 21 Jan 2009 15:55:51 +0000

Banks and credit card companies are hard to deal with these days. A close friend of mine was trying to negotiate with their mortgage company when she lost her job. After 8 weeks of paperwork, they told her she would get an answer in a week. What she got was a letter that they had sold the mortgage to another company. I couldn’t believe it. She tried with the new company and realized they weren’t going to budge. They ended up leaving the house. Another foreclosure. Very sad.

By: Steve

Steve — Tue, 20 Jan 2009 19:00:24 +0000

Pinyo, thanks for the great article! I had been planning on working on this anyway. Thanks to your article I did a search on Bankrate.com and found a great credit card with no transfer fee, and no percentage rate through January of 2010. It’s time to consolidate and eliminate debt in 2009!

By: Miranda

Miranda — Mon, 19 Jan 2009 12:40:00 +0000

Great post! I agree that the first step has to be spend less than you earn. Until you get your spending under control, you won’t ever get out of debt. And Passive Dad is right about creditors — unless you actually stop making payments, they won’t even talk to you about negotiating rates and payments. Which is stupid, since in this economy the companies are better off to help out NOW, before things get dire.

By: The Passive Dad

The Passive Dad — Mon, 19 Jan 2009 05:28:49 +0000

We had some friends who recently tried to negotiate with lenders themselves and negotiate terms and amounts owed. All of the credit card companies and the mortgage company would not budge and insisted that they try and make minimum payments. Since the husband lost his job, they decided to file for bankruptcy. Guess what happened. Lenders started calling them to try and negotiate new loans and forgive some of the balances. Very interesting how the CC companies are now worried they won’t get any money.