Mother in serious debt, finally got full transparency and access, questions on different credit
Hello, I have read a lot of posts on this forum on these types of things, but figured i would make one to see if i can get some specific answers. I would greatly appreciate any help.
Mother wasted away all the savings my father left to her, is current 70(ish) years old. Would not go through with bankruptcy as her car is technically worth too much to meet the exemption and she doesn't want to get evicted. She has a well priced rent situation given the area in which she lives, but it is definitely too expensive of an area/place/situation for her to be in. She will not budge on moving or selling/downgrading her car. If i were in her shoes I'd just declare chapter 7 and start over again since Social security can't be touched and most of her current other income is small jobs by cash or check. I could go into the details, but I have a solid understanding of her budget (am trying to push that side onto her) needs and really just wanted to ask about next steps for her credit situations below.
Of her 200k of debt:
- 160k is student loans that have not been paid since 2006 after they were consolidated into one loan. I am not sure why, but she claims her reported income was so low they keep allowing her to postpone. I believe her plan is to bring these with her to the grave. I would be interested in knowing about what i should know with regards to that.
- She currently has Freedom Debt Relief doing things for her with regards to 30k (2 loans) of the 45k private debt she has paid maybe 600 dollars to them and has since stopped putting into that for 3 months as she has no money to do so at their instruction. I read what i could on these companies and while i understand you can negotiate yourself and that these companies take a fee with each settlement paid out, i would like to know if it is okay to leave this in their hands. I don't care if her credit gets screwed over as she shouldn't be borrowing anyways and her credit sucks already.
- She has a loan that she took out on her car which she is actually paying every month as she doesn't want it to get repossessed. 12k with 400 per month as her payment. I don't really have any questions on this other than, should she pay this off faster, slower, same rate? Is the vehicle at risk of other collections if she pays it off?
- She has what looks to be a 64% APR loan for 3346 dollars. Which she is now paying the monthly amount on, but is already in collections. Obviously this thing needs to get deleted quickly. Is there a case for including it in the Feedom Debt Relief bucket?
- She has only 2 remaining active cc's which are both at capacity at 1.4k total. Not worried about these, but have gotten her to stop using them.
Posted Feb 25, 2016, 12:33 AM UTC