The Long Hard Road...

How did we get into this mess??? I have asked myself this very question more than once. A few weeks ago I had one of those "light bulb comes on over your head moments"-I had pulled up to our mail box, while my 12 year old son's i-pod was blaring and my youngest three kids were all begging for ice cream. As I sorted through the mail I actually opened some of the collection letters (a frequent in our mail) and what I read instantly overwhelmed me. Here we are, my husband is 30 years old and makes a fair living, I am 31, a mother of four, employed full time and a full time student and we are in debt. Not just a little bit, but we are BURRIED. No, we don't have a outragous house-we have a 1000 square foot home on forty acres in the sticks of northeast Texas; we don't have fancy cars-a paid for '02 Neon and an '04 Ford mini-van; no fancy boats, toys, or diamonds. What we do have is four children, three of whom were super high risk pregnancies that caused me to go on bedrest at 14 weeks and basically become a permanent resident of the couch until their preterm deliveries. It took us seven years to get into this mess. Determined to not dread getting our mail (our answering the never ending phone calls) I drove up our driveway with a new zest and a fierce determination to repair the mess we call our credit.

That evening I fixed a quick dinner, watered our garden, put in a load of laundry and got on the internet. As I crawled through the many credit repair websites I found a lot of scams-none of your debt can just be erased- you can't pay a fee to have some one improve your credit score legally-and it definately is not an overnight job. I also learned a lot of useful information. Did you know that you can do everything that credit counseling companies do for free? There are tons of websites that are legit and have form letters to send to your creditors and you can actually dispute items on your credit report! I read over the Fair Credit Reporting Act, as well as the Texas laws regarding debt and felt empowered.

Day 1 - I printed off mine and my husband's free annual credit reports from the credit bureaus. (www.freeannualcreditreport.com) What a scary day that was! We had 18 potentially negative remarks on our credit reports. I then highlighted all of the collection agencies listed on those reports. I drafted a debt validation letter (found at www.debtconsolidationcare.com) and mailed them out via certified mail-important so you have confirmation that the collection agency has recieved the letters. These letters ask collection agencies to prove that they legally own the debt and have the legal right to collect it. They ask for the name of the original creditor, the date the account was opened, the last date of payment, etc. I also included a request to not contact me at work or home via phone, all communication needed to be via postal mail. If the collection agency can not provide this information they are by law required to stop reporting the information to credit bureaus.

Day 2- I am empowered! The phone is still ringing off the hook, but I am feeling confident and actually answer the phone. I do not let my voice faulter as I ask the name and address of the people calling. I also get account or referance numbers. As soon as I hang up, I print out a new letter and get it ready to mail out. I also sit down with my husband and we begin working out a budget. I figure that some of these collection agents are going to be able to validate the debt and we need to start saving so we can pay them off. We are still in the fine tuning phase of budgeting (you see, we make decent money, but always run out at the end of the month, so there must be some holes in our little bucket).

Day 3- the post master just laughs as I come in with more letters. I share my new found knowledge and he says he may have to try the same thing.

Days 4-10 - Hurry up and wait.

Day 11- I get my first validation letter from a creditor. They are a collection agency collecting on old medical bills. Two of them are to old to still be reporting to our credit so they send an intent to delete letter. The others are old, but not more than seven years, and they have all of the required documentation to collect. I call them and tell them that I am working out a budget and will call them as soon as we get all of our ducks in a row. The lady is actually very pleasant and says that she will send me another letter in 45 days to remind me to call her.

Day 17- I get two more letters that say they can not provide validation and will delete! WHOO HOO!!!

Day 19- the letters are coming in, but many are incomplete validation, so I am sending out another letter.

Today is day 20 and we are making a little bit of headway! I am looking forward to Sunday though-no mail, no worries, and maybe some sunshine coming down this long muddy road.