I got served by Citibank this week for a credit card debt. HSBC is as difficult as Citibank. The only offers they made were to pay a reduced debt of 5k in two payments, obviously if I had that I would be making the monthly payments. First the bailouts for them and then they sue the consumers!

On the other hand, one major bank settled 4 of my accounts reversing all late fees, accrued interest, over the limit fees, and askd for a minumal min. payment. This bank is also showing profits in the news. If creditors would work with people that have fallen on hard times, instead of harrassing the consumers - progress would be made.

Chase has been very reasonable and from what I have seen turning around as a bank.

I signed up at Care One Credit just about 8 hours ago without checking like I should have. No monies have been exchanged. Can I cancel the agreement?

Or as you call them lines of credit. My God, man, on your show you recommended a lady get a "third line of credit." I have never had more than one credit card and never bought something I couldn't afford. I have NEVER had trouble getting credit. It is malfeasance to encourage people to get extra credit cards.

it is true the lender can send you a 1099 for the amount of the cancelled debt. and it is income in many cases. Here are the two major exceptions.

1. if the cancelled debt was for business expenses that you never deducted as business expenses because you never paid them (meaning you are a cash basis business), you would pick up the 1099 amount as income on your schedule C or whatever form you file your business tax return on and then claim an equal offsetting deduction for the business expenses you just paid by the debt cancellation, netting to zero taxable income.

2. to the extent have negative personal net work (insolvency)the debt is not income. net worth is defined as the fair market value of all your assets minus your liabilities immediatley before the debt cancellation. So for example if immediately before the charge off your assets were $60k and your liabilities were $64k and the debt relieved was $7k, you would only have to pick up $3k as income. If immediately before the charge off your liabilities exceed your assets by more than the charged off debt, you have zero income to pick up on your tax return.

I would suggest you pay a cpa to prepare your tax return even though there is a cost especially if the amount in question is high enough. they should be able to help you.

Before I found Clark, my wife signed us up for a debt consolidation firm. It sounded good, no more calls, getting our payments all in one lump sum and paying less(i think they got us down 65% of our total). We paid them for a year, then all of the sudden we started getting calls from our credit cards that they hadn't been paid in 3 months. We called and was told our last rep got fired for stealing from the company(including our money). They said its all cleared up. Paid them for 2 months and the calls started again. This time when we called them back the phone was disconnected. You guessed it they skedaddled with all our money! Found out about a class action lawsuit, and when it was all said and done we received $100! Meanwhile on our own we paid off all but 1 credit card in 3 years! Now our credit is a shambles, and we can't do anything about it! Wish I would have read this before!