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How to Legally Eliminate Credit Card Debt

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If you cannot afford to pay your credit card debt and would like to avoid bankruptcy, how can you overcome the burden of too much credit card debt?  The answer is simple.  Just stop paying that unsecured credit card debt. Focus on more important monthly necessities and secured debt.

If you cannot pay, do not attempt to settle the debt and saddle yourself with more payments. That simply prolongs your financial stress and bad credit.

Yes, bankruptcy does offer you protection from creditors, while this selective, informal bankruptcy does not. But, you can avoid debt collectors with the Fair Debt Collection Practices Act (FDCPA) and local consumer protection laws. That  will prevent a ten-year stain of bankruptcy on your credit report. Read more »


List of other related external websites that you may find interesting below. Although I may not agree with all views expressed in the them.

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AOL.com Search Video - Credit Card Theft
AOL.com Search Video - Common Credit Card Scams
Inglewood News Photos and Videos - ABC News
Can you get arrested for not paying a debt? These people did!


Credit Card Debt: How Sick Are You?

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The easy answer to that question is to calculate how long it will take you to pay off your credit card debt, when you can afford to do that.  (Do not use commas or decimal points, e.g., $50,000 at 20%, $1000/month would be 50000, 20 and 1000.)
Months It Will Take To Be Debt Free:
Years It Will Take To Be Debt Free:
Total Amount Payed To Lender:
Total Interest Paid To Lender:

Do your debt calculator calculations indicate that you are ailing financially?  What are you options–debt counseling, debt management, debt settlement, debt negotiation, or debt consolidation?  Those professionals all want you to pay them to help you get out of debt.  Can you afford to pay them?

Today, one in seven consumers is faced with the non-payment payment option for dealing with their credit card debt.  Typically that option is expressed as bankruptcy.  That is where you pay a bankruptcy attorney and trustee to help you “solve” your debt problems.

For credit card debt, there is one more option; simple non-payment.

If you reach the point where you cannot pay off your credit cards, do not sacrifice monthly essentials for those bills.  Just stop paying them.  Keep making home mortgage, auto loan, healthcare, etc. payments.

The non-payment option means you, like every other seventh consumer will be contacted by debt collectors and collection attorneys threatening you with court action.  And, since you owe, how could you possibly defend yourself against court action for a credit card debt?

Psst. Debt collectors and collection attorneys do not want you to know this, but consumers who owe can fairly easily defend themselves

figure talk giant phone 225x300 Credit Card Debt: How Sick Are You?

Debt collectors tell scary lies over the phone.

against credit card court action. There have been a lot of news stories lately about robo-signing (You can read the detail in my recent blog.).  Collection attorneys and junk debt buyers, and even credit card banks themselves, have difficulty documenting the historical detail of our credit card debt. They cannot produce a signed contract because there is none.  And, their biggest problem is finding someone who has actual personal knowledge of our credit card account; someone to sign an affidavit attesting to the accuracy of copies of monthly statements or signed applications, or whatever weak documentation they hope will serve to bully us into submission.

The cure for credit card debt you cannot afford to pay is non-payment and learning to be a sophisticated consumer commission-paid debt collectors and attorneys would rather not spend their time with.

If you are worried about your credit card debt and debt collectors, get my free  Seven Dangers of Not Knowing How to Deal with a Debt Collector.


List of other related external websites that you may find interesting below. Although I may not agree with all views expressed in the them.

AOL.com Video - Marlo Thomas With Financial Expert Jean Chatzky
National Legal Debt Centers Inc. Consumer Alert - Beware of ...
Credit Card Debt Solution-Bank Of America Scams Tricks And ...
Money Management for Students | Central Michigan University
How to spot a recession scam - Liz Pulliam Weston - MSN Money


One in Seven Consumers Are or Will Be in Contact with Debt Collectors

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Knowing how to deal with  debt collectors when you owe and cannot afford to pay is becoming a basic survival skill in today’s economy. According to blogger Matt Stoller, a former senate policy advisor and a fellow at the Roosevelt Institute, the Federal Reserve’s last Quarterly Release on Household Debt and Credit  the number of people subject to third party collections has doubled since 2000, from a little less than 7% to a little over 14% of consumers.  Ten years ago, one in fourteen American consumers were pursued by debt collectors.  Today it’s one in seven. Most of those contacts [...] Read more »

Despite Publicized Crackdowns, Debt Collectors Likely to Continue with Lies and Threats

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A recent issue of Forbes Magazine reports that in the wake of the Great Recession, debt collectors are not faring as well as we would assume. They are feeling the difficult economy as much as most other businesses, rather than cashing in on the increased number of consumer debts. Excerpts from the Forbes article — The Myth of the Debt Collection Boom According to a recent study conducted by Ernst & Young on behalf of accounts receivable management (ARM) trade group ACA International, Employment in the ARM industry declined 4.5 percent from 2007 to 2010. Why? {Forbes has} been told [...] Read more »

More on Robo-Signing by Debt Collectors to Win Credit Card Lawsuits

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If you are worried about the possibility of having a credit card debt lawsuit filed against you because you have credit card debt you cannot afford to pay, you are one of 30 million Americans who could be affected by debt collection, according to the Consumer Finance Protection Bureau. While the CFPB is likely to put an end to it, you should be on the look out for the robo-signing of documents used in credit card lawsuits and to threaten you into paying what you cannot afford to pay. A blog, A New Kind of Killer App: RoboSigning 2.0, in [...] Read more »

Debt Collector/Debt Buyer Fined $2.5 Million for Lying to Consumers about Debt Statutes of Limitations

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Here are more reasons why you can successful not pay credit card debt you can not afford to pay, if you know what you are doing with a debt collector. You do not have to pay if your debt is older than your state’s statute of limitations for debt collection by court action.  The statute of limitations (SOL) for open accounts begins when a consumer fails to make a payment and varies from state to state.  Here is a state-by-state breakdown of SOL. You should not make a token a payment on an old debt to get a debt collector [...] Read more »

The Credit Repair Part of Credit Card Debt Relief

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Where your credit is concerned, non-payment of credit card debt is better than bankruptcy.  Bankruptcy is a ten-year deep freeze on your credit, while the effects of late payments and charge-offs ease with time.  As those bad marks age to their seven year limit on your credit report, your credit score will improve, if you are making timely payments on other debts.  This final piece of credit card debt relief, healthy credit, will happen a lot faster without bankruptcy, To improve your credit score, if you are having difficulty paying your credit card debts, first check it. You will be [...] Read more »

How to get rid of credit card debt – How Can You Get Out Of Credit Card Debt?

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Too many people choose the wrong kind of credit card debt help. They deceive themselves into believing they can manage a debt management payment plan, or they can afford to begin a lump sum debt settlement savings plan (where they skip their monthly payments to bank that money with a debt settlement firm to one day offer a final lump sum settlement amount). Are you looking for ways how to get rid of credit card debt ? Can you afford to pay your monthly credit card statements or not?  Or more basically, are you actually willing to face the truth [...] Read more »

Can’t Pay Credit Card Debt? How This is Related to Occupy Wall Street

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How does credit card debt relief fit into the protests against very uneven wealth distribution in this country . . . or, into the clash between traditional American values and deep-pocket, short-term profiteers looking to the U.S. taxpayer for a bailout when things go wrong with their financial schemes? Bank of America, Chase, Citigroup, and Capital One, all too-big-to-fail institutions, all bailed out for billions in 2008, issue over two-thirds of the credit cards used in the U.S. While they each benefited from a bailout when misfortune or poor judgment befell THEM, none of their credit card holders can hope [...] Read more »

How Can I Eliminate Credit Card Debt? – Credit Card Debt Scams to Avoid

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We all would like to find someone with more expertise to show us how to eliminate credit card debt  in our time of need.  Unfortunately a small industry of fly-by-night credit card debt relief opportunists now exists not to meet, but to take advantage of that need. Credit card debt relief scams all do the same thing at the most basic level; they promise relief later for payment now. Until recently lump-sum debt settlement was at the top of the debt-relief scam list. Why? Because debt settlement companies take their fees out of monies you pay them BEFORE paying your creditors. [...] Read more »