Why did you file Bankruptcy??

Well for me,

I filed bankruptcy two years ago and it was a life saver for me. When I went with my first debt consolidation company it was one I found online. At that time I only had credit cards and old utility bills. I was with the company for two years and nothing was paid off. Money got tight again and I fell behind on my payments to the consolidation company and that's when I discovered payday loans. Then I kept getting one after another after another after another. It was just way to easy. While that was happening the credit card companies were starting to call me again so then I realized I needed to do something once again. This time I signed up with a company that was in my local town. I was making payments with them, but some of the credit cards were so behind by then they were demanding more. The company that had my Capital One Card was getting ready to sue me, so after putting everything down on paper and meeting with different counselors and a bankruptcy attorney I decided that was the best way to go. My debt was just overwhelming, I was working two jobs and still couldn't keep up.

Now two years after filing bankruptcy I'm once again with a consolidation company trying to clear up my payday loans and a few credit cards. I found myself heading down the same path and I'm stopping it now before it gets out of control again.

For us, it just seemed like it was inevitable. We had originally hoped to be able to save enough money to offer settlements to our creditors. However, we had two of them that started threatening us with lawsuits at only 90 days past due. Also, at that same point, we had only a couple thousand dollars saved up. Since our total debt was about $140,000, we figured that we would need somewhere in the neighborhood of $50,000 to $70,000 at least to be able to settle all of them. Looking at it realistically, since we were (and are) barely scraping by, there was no way that we were going to be able to save that much money. So since BK seemed to be inevitable (short of winning the lottery, which we don't play!), we decided that we might as well save ourselves the debt collection calls, harrassment, and other headaches, and just get it over with and move on with our lives.

I ws working my first full time job (actually 1st full time job EVER) after being out of the job market for years. I was making excellent money and had a job with the county, what could be wrong? All of the money I was making went towards my debt management plan and childcare. On top of this, I was served with 2 lawsuits from creditors. These 2 creditors were NOT budging and wanted to get paid more than was being offered. More importantly, I was getting physically ill and crying everyday from the constant phone calls. My teen was becoming a huge problem, not that they aren't anyway at that age, but the law was getting involved. I thought to myself, is all of that hard work worth paying these people back and still get the calls and more importantly, is losing my children worth. I said NO! Just today at 3pm I had my meeting of creditors and it wasn't as bad as I thought. I now sleep in peace knowing my children are safe and not getting into trouble and I can answer my phone! It has been worth it. Sure, my credit is shot, but it was shot anyways from all the late pays. I wish you luck!