That's only true if you pay interest....I don't. :)

Now THAT'S some funny-ass shit. :lol:

One of my daughters is older than twenty. (As I pointed out, my Visa card is over 30.) Not sure what point you're making with *that* accusation. Would I be expected to be more "sympathetic" if were 18? Or 40? I somehow must have missed the announcement that the Cellar had become the Brianna Support Group and thus completely spoiled your Pity Party.

Sorry, but I'm kinda short on sympathy. I was out of work for the last four years...I continued meeting all my financial obligations, including my share of putting the aformentioned daughter through college and continued payments on my mortgage. That and the associated taxes and penalties (10%, not peanuts) have completely gutted the savings I was hoping to eventually retire on.

But I paid my debts.

As for being a "guy", my passport, D/L, birth cert, pilot's licence and concealed carry permits (PA and FL both) all say "female". But obviously if I was a *real* woman I'd be awestruck by your plight...you know:

"Awwwwwwwwww....."

Boo-hooing over running up a $2.5k bill and then complaining how unfair it is that you now can't get free legal assistance to avoid a judgement just sounds...well...whiny. Some folks seem to have a problem distinguishing "justice" and "charity"...when they don't get freebies to which they feel entitled, to they complain that it's "injustice".

maggie? Forgive me. After reading about your sad life and how you've triumphed, you are now MY HERO! I plan on emulating you in all things, except your obvious bitter heart. I'm going to take a wild guess here and suggest your a human resources-type of drain on society? Anyway, good luck with that.

I will say this. I came to the Cellar in July of '04, the lowest point in my life. I was suffering from many things, and I had the wonderful fortune of stumbling down the stairs and landing here (I honestly WAS Googling 'Whale Penis' when I found this place!) I have indeed used this forum for a sounding board and I have found many truly wonderful, caring, insightful, brilliant people here. I feel like a found a home, of sorts. You guys have helped me, saved me, made me laugh...made me cry...I am so very happy that I found you all. I thank every one of you for helping me through the very hardest part of my life. You have my gratitude and my heartfelt thanks.

Speak for yourself, Brianna - I care what she thinks.

Some of us know people in substantially deeper shit than you and substantially less capable of digging out who have not given up.

And I also think I know a few other things:

1. If we all turn into a bunch of sympathising ass-kissers then we aren't helping each other at all. I'm not willing to limit my input in a support thread to unconditional acceptance. Learn to handle honesty. I'm not above needing the occasional kick in the ass from folk I trust to level with me.

2. Your "...tough love need not apply" attitude in this thread is a mild form of pre-emptive thread censorship. Your reply to ML is a) devoid of fany actual rebuttal and b) comes across as an emotional knee-jerk. Either get on my bandwagon or not - middle ground or independent opinions are excused in advance.

While I wish to be supportive, I need to hear some granule of concern from you at least acknowledging a measure of responsibility. All I've read thus far is unrestrained contempt for an atty who won't take time away from someone who is being treated unfairly to represent someone who wants a "get out of owing people some money" card.

Bringing this back to the original issue (well trying to - time to draw the proverbial line I think M & B...), in today's paper an article reporting how a guy who had been charged ridiculous admin charges by his bank every time a direct debit was cancelled because of insufficient funds was given out of court settlement by the offending (offensive?) bank of £5,000 - double the amount they had charged him originally.

Clearly the bank did not want a legal judgement on this as we have a law known as the 'Unfair Terms and Contracts' legislation - if they lost in court that could cost them a fortune from all those guys who pay up without a fight. The guy argued that the charges were not represanative of what it cost the bank and that they were an unfair profit-making scheme and an unrealistic penalty. Seems a transferrable argument to me....

Don't take what is being demanded as set in stone. Rules laid down by suppliers aren't always right or upheld by the Courts. There may be mileage in your problem yet. Just because the supplier says you should pay a ridiculous level of interest to settle an old debt doesn't mean you are therefore bound to do so. The capital will be hard to argue as not owing, but I reckon the rest is potentially negotiable. Worth the effort, I reckon, to spend a few hours arguing, if the result could be a few hunderd $ saving...

[quote=Beestie]While I wish to be supportive, I need to hear some granule of concern from you at least acknowledging a measure of responsibility[quote]

You don't need to hear anything from me. I asked for advice from anyone who'd been thru a smiliar situation and I got some good input. If the thread made you mad, you could just skip it. I skip threads and posts from people all the time, I'm not the worse for it. I suggest you try it. Your blood pressure is up.

Actually I'm a software engineer...been one for over thirty years now. The four year hiatus wasn't offered as evidence that I've had some sort of "sad life", but as an explanation as to why your being held to the terms of your credit contract doesn't seem like such a huge injustice.

Overall my life has been pretty decent, except for the tech bubble that started about 1995 with a bunch of people with no particular talent getting sucked into the industry by the lure of easy high-paying jobs and ended with the investment bankers running out of "pump" and switching to "dump", with all the chaos that ensued.

Since family obligations kept me tied to the Philly area (where the bursting bubble was felt a bit harder than some other places) I had to ride it out here rather than migrating to one of the few places where there was some work. What a bitter, biiter heart indeed I must have to not melt over your tragic tale of woe and abuse at the hands of the Evil Capitalists and their Geedy Henchmen.

Anyway, all you had to do to stave off this crisis was maintain the minimum payments until such time as you're able to pay down the debt.

As long as we're indulging in "wild guesses", is it possible you're now stuck because of this: http://moneycentral.msn.com/content/...ts/P117014.asp ?

Probably not...the mandatory increase in minimum payments is only going into effect now, and you're already at the suing-for-judgement stage. So you're apparently on the docket now for repeated failures to pay a 2% minimum monthly, which on $2500 would be $50. Not much to avoid the kind of trouble you're now in.

How many payments did you miss before they filed? They only do that when they're convinced you're *never* going to pay up and have to settle for a judgement that they probably won't be able to collect on. I expect they'll sell that at a huge discount to some cheesy collection agency, who'll do the usual wage garnishment/car seizure kind of thing to make something on the deal.

They'd much rather have you make minimum payments almost forever.

By the way...given the context, for *you* to suggest that *I'm* a drain on society is pretty ironic, don't you think? Pot, kettle, that sort of thing. Red herring, etc.

Oh, Maggie. I'm going to guess that you know nothing at all about me or my situation-after all, how could you? You really only are concerned with the ugly things in life. I began this thread looking for info--nothing else. The only thing I said about injustice is that it seems as though the system is skewed towards people who can afford an attorney; people who cannot afford one can't even begin to answer because the information or answer isn't in the right FORMAT. That seems absurd to me. You may think it's wonderful. Whatever. You like the credit card companies. You think they play fairly and squarely and everyone who is in trouble certainly deserves it. Is everything so black and white for you? That must be nice.

And it's 1.5K, not 2.5k. But I don't expect you to pay attention to silly details, either.

I'm going to pray for you, Maggie.

How about them Steelers? :p

I agree with Maggie completely. It astounds me how many people are irresponsible when it comes to personal finance. Maybe they are taking lessons from the goverment (but thats anothery story)

According to a BusinessWeek report, total household debt -- including credit cards, car loans, mortgage, student loans, etc. -- topped 100% of disposable annual income last year for the first time ever.

On average, we carry eight cards per person and have a balance of $8,400 in credit card debt. Twenty percent of our cards are maxed out, according to CardWeb.com.

A simple lesson for personal responsiblity. Misery, in this case, is self-inflicted.

It astounds me how many people assume I am in the wrong. I have not said how this debt came about. This is part of a divorce debt. Not that anything matters anymore. You are off and running now.

Sorry, I forgot exactly how trivial it was. So the minumum payments were in fact only $30, not $50. Again, how many did you miss before they pulled the plug on you?

Legal documents are required to be in proper form to make it possible to process them efficiently and interpret them without ambiguity. Otherwise a lot of expensive people (most of them funded by taxes) would end up spending time trying to read and understand pointless mispelled submissions written with bad grammar in crayon on paper towels.

All you had to do to avoid litigation (which is *always* expensive) was make that $30 minimum monthly. But since you said you have no defense to the action anyway, why waste evrybody's time? Don't file anything, fail to appear, and a judgement will be entered by default...which is the result you're going to get anyway.

Also don't waste effort praying for me; I'm exactly how Goddess indends me to be. Maybe you should focus on taking care of business first.

I would have recommended taking the ex to Judge Judy (no lawyer fees) after the first overdue notice. :)