Who Am I?
Hello World,
I am James Robinson from Seattle, WA
In early 2008 I lost my job as a web designer. Like many people are finding these days, it was not so easy to find a replacement job. Meanwhile I made the cardinal mistake of a person in hardship, I started living off my credit cards. By Spring 2008 I had amassed around $40,000 in credit card debt. By now, the initial “0% interest” offers were wearing out and as was my small savings.
In late summer I found a part time freelance job doing web design but my salary was less than a quarter of my previous employment. By this point the credit card minimums were more than my salary. I started skipping payments on one for one month and another the next month, etc. This “strategy” kept them from harassing me too much. But then they raised my interest rates on all my cards to well over 20% and, predictably, my minimum payments shot up along with them. Now I was only able to make small “good faith payments” which didn’t even cover the minimum payments due. Lates were being collected on my credit report by the dozen, and my phone rang like Sunday church bells. By the time I found decent income work my finances were a wreck and I could not see any way out of this mess.
In late summer 2008 I began to call creditors to try and work something out. They weren’t willing to help me for the most part unless I could become current or make a very sizable payment which simply wasn’t possible for me. Meanwhile the calls kept coming and coming.
I considered bankruptcy. I spoke to the lawyer but now he said I had too much equity in my home and would have to refinance or sell the home first. How could I sell the home in this market? And now my credit was so bad that noone would refinance me!
I began searching online and found out about debt settlement. I started calling creditors to work with me to settle the debts. It took a lot of calls. Many collectors would swear, threaten, hang up, you name it! Often I would have to call the same place several times simply to get someone on the phone who would listen. But eventually I was able to reach settlements within my reach and my new income. Two debts have been “settled in full” now meaning I don’t owe them anymore. I settled for around 60% on both of them over 3 payments each. The rest I am either in a “term settlement” with or I need to save more money yet. My goal is to be debt free by 2009. I can now sleep again at night because I can see the end of my debt is near.
I created this site to tell my story and to let others tell theirs and to let the public share their experiences and knowledge to help them recover from this type of situation. I know this must be a more and more common situation these days as tens of thousands of people are losing their jobs and millions are losing their homes to foreclosure. I hope at very least this site will become a place for people to have a virtual shoulder to cry on or comforting hand to hold in difficult financial times.
I plan to add as many useful articles and resources I can find to this blog. I am also willing to invest 2 hours everyday answering your questions. I am not a lawyer, but I have done successfully what i guess everyone wants to do in America today. GET OUT OF DEBT.
I am an active participant in wiki.answers and answers.yahoo, I thought to extent my offer by building my own blog. You know there are a lot of restrictions on those sites. I can’t upload calculators or excel sheets i use to plan my budget, etc.
I will add as many resources I can to this blog. Debt calculators, Debt to Income calculators, Financial budgeting soft wares, etc
I am also working on an ebook, which explains step by step how I settled all my debts with the creditors. I do NOT plan to sell it, I will distribute it free to all my readers.
Maybe you would like to Subscribe to RSS feed to keep yourself updated about the release of the How to get out of debt, I know because I did it.
Sincerely,
James Robinson
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