Freedom Debt Relief opinions needed

Debt consolidation

has anyone used a company such as “Freedom Debt Relief” where they negotiate with the credit card company’s to get you out of debt?

I have used a consolidation company before, CCBC I think. They were great and helped a lot a few years ago.

I would definitely like to consolidate the debt somehow. For now I have figure out a pretty good budget and I’m proud and a bit relieved to see that we have money to put where we need it most.

My husband is in the Navy and will be getting out in about a year. We are not sure how much he will be makingin the civilian world, so I’m sure we’ll have to adjust. Obviously then, the less debt, the better.

We hired a company called Elite Financial. Here we are 1-1/2 years later and only one small debt has been negotiated. Our original balance was $2200, which climbed to $3300 with all the interest and fees tacked on, and we settled for $2600!!! Plus we had to pay them $153.00 on top of that.

We have just hired a financial planner we found on Dave Ramsey’s website and we will pull out all the funds we have in the account they set up and use it for our snowball.

I’ll keep everyone posted on our progress with the financial planner using DR strategy.

I’m not sure I understand what you mean by how? I was able to allot money into all the important catagories and even for X-mas shopping so I’m not hit by that all at once. I should have enough for bills, extra to pay on credit cards, savings, etc. etc. Before I just lumped all the “extra” money together. For example, after paying bills I usually had about $600 leftover each check. That was money for gas, groceries, etc. Well it probably went towards etc. more than anything, and then the money was gone. We didn’t feel like money was tight, but never felt like we had any extra to put in savings. I was amazed to see that I could actually put money aside to save and still be able to buy gas and groceries and breathe.

Re: I’m in deep trouble! Please advise ASAP!

Debt collectors, Debt consolidation

Please wait for advice from people more knowledgeable in the list, but since you already doubt the sincerity of the debt collector, I would advice you not to trust the scheme they propose that you send them a money order for $9,000, for them to return $8,200 to your bank. It sounds like they will attempt to keep $16,000 rather than settle for the lower amount.

We have been dealing with a debt consolidation program for several years. A couple of years ago Discover took us to court. Since then, they (even though they know that we are working with a debt consolidation company who is trying to work with them) have garnished our checking account several times taking everything out of it each time.

We are only notified of the garnishment after the fact through a letter from the sherrifs dept which usually arrives 2-3 days after the garnishment(the garnishment releases after 30 days and the bank unfreezes the account).

We have limited income and because they garnished our account, there were several times that I was unable to have the money needed for my required heart medications.

We have resorted to only keeping 50 or less in the checking account now, and paying cash or getting money orders for everything just to keep from losing everything again.

If you open another account at a different bank, they will eventually find you there too but probably not for 30-90 days. All I can tell you is what we have done and it’s not easy. We have done away with all our credit cards though, and it feels good to think that hopefully in a few more years we will be debt free.

Thanks for your advice. I went to see a bankruptcy lawyer yesterday (Saturday) and he said he can file an exemption in the next few days since it has not been 10 days yet and try to get the $8200 back for $500 service fee only. The sheriff department or the debt collector will most likely object but the lawyer said we could fight this in the court with a judge if they object. There is a good chance of getting it back because I did not incur the debt. My brother did while I was away for three years. Plus, $5000 out of the $8200 was a tuition check for my wife from the church. The lawyer also said he will make a few calls to Resurgence Financial debt collector and settle the account for me at no additional cost. Think this is a pretty good $500 deal.
I’ll let you know how this goes…