Replies to '09/15 Money Matters: Surviving the Crisis'

Quote From: mamadee811

GOD kept me home today from work for me to watch this show!!! I felt like I was listening to my life story except I don't owe quite as much but still we are in the same boat. Like most people (I'm learning ) we too have no concept of managing money and are up to our ears in debt. We got here by borrowing and spending someone elses money until it is all gone and now we can;t make enough to keep up with what we owe.Sometimes I wake up wondering what planet we've been living on to get into the shape we are in now. We have been married 32 years and are broker than we were when we first got married making less than 200/wk. We've always lived on the edge but never fell over the wall until NOW. We are getting older and can't work 2-3 jobs to make ends meet. The sad thing is we are making more than we've ever made but have no cash flow because it's all going out on our debts. I wish someone that knows how to manage money can get our situation going in a positive direction so we can started looking for a better future when we can retire on more solid ground. I am the money manager in the family and got my qualifications from the idiot academy for money managing!!! All I ever thought money we made was for the moment and the hell with the future. We started making more money say 5 years ago and are making over 100,000/yr together but right now I have made all 5 of the money mistakes Dr. Phil mentioned on his show and we have no cash flow to get through the week . I  enrolled in Care One Debt Counseling in Feb/2008 and seem to be worse off than we were trying to pay all our debitors. I changed from the debt management program to the debt settlement program where a law firm gets involved to settle your debt by having the debtors agree to a lesser amount of what you owe them,but this takes several years to get  enough  money in their special account to even start negoiating . Anyway the phone is ringing off the hook every second of the day and weekends by our creditors and I feel so guilty because I can't pay back what they lent us. I don't want to run from my responsibilties and want to pay back what we've borrowed and the credit cards we ran up but the cash flow isn't there to pay--- Are we doing the right thing by going through the debit management or should we just bite the bullet and bankrupt and start over??? HELP a hopeless situation  Mamadee811