^^ movie with Lyndsy Fonseca. Just sayin...

woooooooooo copy of RE4 in the house, best game evar.

evening plan: blow kush and pwn zombies

OTI is tard monkey update:

spent the last 4 hours on the phone with the various companies I owe money to doing what I should have already done when this **** happened in the first place.

I was able to haggle some pretty solid settlements with the cc companies which decreased that debt by about 60%. I think I'm just gonna borrow money from Parents/GF and work my ass off in poker this month to pay them back. It will save me a lot of money over trying to do this all on my own and is much better longterm than bankruptcy.

TY all for the help so far but it's far from over. Still gotta deal with a few other bills.

That's really good OTI

My brother has got himself into like 30k worth of debt, and it's painful to watch him deny its existence

Not to mention: it's rewarding to know that you handled it and paid it off yourself, rather than running from it.

And to put this into perspective: lol that your solution is "i'll just work my ass off this month in poker to pay it back." If there was a 1-month solution, it wasn't a super hard problem to start with

Anyway, glad to hear that things are working out. Keep on it, and try to stay debt-free.

hmm i wonder if i had to make 10 phone calls to strangers to save my financial future if i could do it.

congrats on coming up with a plan hope it all works out.

i love it when a plan comes together

Hopefully, by blow, you didn't mean blow.

MJ is one thing... Blow...

"blow kush" not "blow, kush"

Carry on...

but what fun are the hookers without the blow?

you put your penis in them

Day 2 of payback mode

Already scheduled to pay back about 2K of my debt this month and 3k over the next 2 months. Cutting the amount owed by ~2.5k.

I'm actually not in as bad of shape as I thought because when I read my credit report a couple of the debts were on there twice, once as the original dept and the other from the collection agency.

I only have 1 more I have to deal with but hopefully I can work out something I can afford and I won't have to ask my Dad for money. Though the amount I might have to ask for is going to be much lower than I planned on originally so I wouldn't feel as bad about it as I thought.

Anyways I appreciate the kind words. It's much easier to do this after getting the ball rolling. I really hate having to call people like this but after admitting my problem it was much easier to deal with. I never really understood that expression until now.

This is only somewhat on topic but how do those companies work who apparently buy your debt and make you pay it to them instead? Or am I just making that up?

OTI might have been able to negotiate up to 50% off his debt, these guys buy in bulk for 10%, rent office space and hire 14 loser ass holes to make phone calls all day.

One of my the collection companies I dealt with reportedly bought the debt for $.03 on the dollar.

Unfortunately they deal with the debtors by finding local lawfirms to take on that debt and sue people who they think they can get money from and since they had filed court paperwork.

So I didn't get near as sweet a deal from them as I did w/ one of my other companies. Paid ~50% to them while I only pay about ~30% of another.

You can also offer to pay back your friends/family that loan you money with interest (that is lower than the debt interest and still > what they get in a savings account). Win/win assuming you're a trustable person.

borrowing money from family and friends - win/win!

Obviously it can lead to massive fail but I'm assuming OTI is of reputable character and has reliable family/friends

My dad and his brother do this family-loan all the time depending on who has more spare money and who needs some expensiveish stuff.

I guess any problem you can borrow yourself into you can borrow your way out

yeah i mean i've never heard any stories to the contrary

Just because you'd prefer to not borrow in the first place doesn't mean that borrowing from a different source to pay off your initial debt isn't +EV.

Also I don't get the negative vibe against loaning/borrowing money. It's just a natural manifestation of different time preferences as long as both sides understand the uncertainties.

FWIW the most money I have ever owed is like 50$ from a CC purchase and technically I wouldn't even concider that owing money because I have my CC expenditures covered at all times (can't overdraw it either).

with current ludicrous available savings rates, borrowing from family can be genuinely win/win. Obviously there's cutoutofthewill risk in case of default, but ykno, whatever.

edit: or, in other words, who reads CT's posts anyway? :red:

From my experience,

Lending money to family and friends is basically giving money to family and friends.