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Consumer Credit Counseling – Payments Cut in Half 

Last week, I mentioned that I had called CCCS, the consumer credit counseling service.  Today we received a letter from the Linda, the woman I spoke with on the phone, stating the new terms of our loans.

Previously we’d owed a great deal on the credit cards, so the payments were quite high.  We owed a total of three credit cards, and each had a minimum payment of about $200.  This made our total credit card payments about $600 – and impossible to pay.

After we’d gotten off the phone, Linda had contacted every credit card company and informed them that we were now under the auspices of the Consumer Credit Counseling service of New Hampshire.  After negotiating new reduced terms with the credit card companies, she’d reduced our payments as follows:

Credit Card #1: From $200 down to $85.

Credit Card #2: From $200 down to $120

Credit Card #3: From $200 down to $65

This makes our total minimum monthly debt payment $270.  Plus the CCCS monthly fee of $25. This is $305 less than our old minimum payment!

The savings are just amazing – the only catch is that we can’t apply for any more credit or loans…so we’re going to have to be very, very careful with our spending. 

After getting this letter, I called Linda one more time to ask her about the process of making payments, since all payments are processed through CCCS.  She said that it typically would take about a couple of weeks for them to set up the process that would be used to pay our bills.  I was very pleasantly surprised to learn that we will also get this next month off from making a payment while they sort things out!

Since this next month we don’t have to pay the $600 set of credit card bills, all we need is to somehow make another $1400 or so this month in order to pay the overdue balance on the mortgage and save us from entering the foreclosure process.  I’ve no idea where we’re going to get that kind of money – but we don’t really have a choice.  It’s either we earn it from somewhere, or City and I , and the kids, are basically going to be homeless.

 The saga of Ryan & Jen Dube ( to be continued)