debt consolidation looks difficult

[Fleshdancer]

I have a friend who has a lot of old debt he wants to clear up so I offered to do a little research on debt consolidation but the more I look into it, the more scary it looks. There are so many warnings about scams that I'm wondering if I should just tell him to try to work it out himself. :shrug:

Has anyone here ever done it? Was it successful? Is there a company I should look into?

[pitohui]

1. close friends did it, it wasn't successful

it's basically a scam, yeah, your credit is ruined anyway, so you would do better to go ahead and declare bankruptcy and start over w.out all the crap hanging over your heads

they had to declare bankruptcy anyway, all credit consolidation did really was cause them more stress and cost them more time

also even tho it was a "reputable" company they didn't pay the bills on time so even after consolidation my friends were being harassed, and that was uncool as the reason they couldn't pay all of their bills in the first place was cancer and they didn't need to be harassed by bill collectors on top of it

[LostinVA]

2. It's best to declare Chapter 7

That way, your new clock starts ticking as soon as you get your judgement... even IF you can find a legit DC (hahhahaha), your "new clock" doesn't start ticking until the debt is gone. PLUS, it still shows up on your credit report... my sister's mortgage guy told her a Chapter 7 two years out with a clean record is WAY better than still being in DC.