Say Goodbye to the Plastic

Buh-bye, credit cards!! I mentally wave my fingers in the direction of the credit cards being snipped apart ceremoniously into the giant fish tank n the Credit Rehab Lady's office. My plastic bits join a small mountain of its relatives from the hundreds of credit rehabbers who have traveled this path before me. (Sniff-sniff, small tear rolls down my cheek...big sigh)

OK - moving on, now.
In my head I hear a David Bowie song....
"Ch-Ch-Ch-Ch-Changes (Don't want to be a better man) Ch-Ch-Changes (Just gonna be a different man.) I still don't know what I was waiting for...and my time was running wild."

It was sort of a therapy-meets-financial-planner session. I laid out my sordid "confession of fnancial errors" as it were, and she patiently nodded, didn't raise her eyebrows or say anything like, "Good grief, you're kidding, right?!" (How mortifying would that be, right?)
She even had tissues handy...I guess a lot of us get weepy as we unburden ourselves about our debt-filled lives.

So after "the credit confession", she tallies it all up (pretty scary couple of moments there, I'll tell you). "We'll contact all of these companies and try to get the interest rates lowered, and set up a regular date they'll get monthly payment." Sounds really doable, at this point - followed by...
"It looks like if we get some good interest rates (at least half of the 29.99999 I'm futilely attempting to keep up with presently) you can pay all of this off in about (pause) 5 years."

SILENCE.

What?!? I thought maybe some of the debt could just be downsized! Nope. No chance of that, missy!

SHIT.

OK. Well, I guess it beats the paycheck shuffle I've been dancing for the past couple of years....so, ok.

To their credit (get it?) they collect a very small fee, and then a pittance sum (about $20 per month) for the life of this payback process for their trouble. (I imagine the credit card companies give them a slice of something - but I don't know for sure...whatever...who cares.)

So I sign on the dotted line and agree to revisit the Credit Rehab Lady at least once a year to review our progress....like in case I win the lottery or something and can afford to pay the Chaseme Hounds $1,200 a month instead of $85, right?!

So I'm good to go....I still have a mountain of debt - but I've got the Rehab Lady in my corner and things don't seem quite so unwieldy. (Though I still dream of winning the lottery and erasing all debt in a single day - I can at least sleep mostly through the night after this meeting - a "first" for a very long time!.)

Check back later...there's more.

Suzette