People, PAY YOUR BILLS

[The Duchess of Zeon]

A credit card is a part of modern life. A mortgage is the only way you can buy a home unless you are just plain ass wealthly. Getting an equity line against your home can be very valuable too if used responsibly. Consumer debt sucks, but debt to pay for school or buy a home is a usually a means to a better end.

This is where Andrew tells you to homestead in Alaska.

[Beowulf]

You mean, an emergency like your transmission dying without warning or a windstorm knocking a tree through your roof? Are you telling me that would drive you to suicide?

Those are hardly the sort of dire, urgent emergencies that you were talking about. Fuck it, I'd probably carry enough cash on me for bus fare and a motel room if my car died. If a storm smashes my roof the floor underneath is probably soaked anyway, so there's no point in trying to get it fixed overnight.

Your house burns down. It'll be months before you can get the insurance money. What do you do?

[FireNexus]

And if you want to stay out of debt, never buy stuff on credit that your SigOther swears "I'll help you pay it off!"

I've got a $4000 debt hanging over my head because of that. Everytime a debt collector (there's been three? four?) calls/writes about it, the 'settlement amount' is more than my monthly paycheck!

So I just trash the letters and ignore any phone calls that the Caller ID doesn't ID. Odd how most debt collectors show up as 'Unknown Number".

You can always do a payment arrangement. My company will accept pretty much anything you can offer, if you give us a post dated check that day. But remember that paying off those debts will seriously help your credit for the future. And eventually the credit company will bring you to court to get that money. They can take years to do it, but they will, eventually. Wage garnishment is not fun.