I am not ignoring the other parts of your posts; I will get to them tomorrow when I have a little bit more time.
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Originally Posted by Apollia 
Sure. It's not too complicated. I live with my family, with free housing, food, etc. I don't drive because it costs too much money. I help my family out with computer stuff, website stuff, proofreading, shopping, cleaning, looking after my sister, etc. I even wrote a little computer program in Perl to make it easier for my step-dad to create billing invoices for his job, which over time has probably saved my step-dad from days of extra work, since he used to have a far less efficient, not so automated system for creating invoices.
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Good for you.
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Originally Posted by Apollia I haven't checked lately, but, I estimate that in approximately 12 months of being in default, my balances have probably risen from about $10,000 total to probably around $13,000, just from the fees and interest - quite possibly a lot more since I'm doing a low estimate. It might be more like $14,000 if the interest is closer to $100 per card per month; and also, I haven't taken into account the fact that the interest has probably been increasing each month as the balances have been rising. |
I am going to assume that you live in USA.
At $6.55 an hour the current minimum wage in America, you would be able to gross, $13,264 a year working 40 hours a week, before taxes. After Medicare and social security you would have $12,249.30, from this you would have to pay federal taxes of about 8% (if your parents claim you as a dependent), leaving about $11,270, cut off another 2% for state and another 3% for conservatism on my calculations and you get take home pay of about $10,700 or $891 a month.
Assuming you have 13k in debt at 30%, you can pay it all off in 5 years and still be able to save over $470 a month. If you apply the total 891 to reducing your debt you can be debt free in about 18 month. If the interest rate is lower or you can make more a month, you can be free even quicker.
I did this to show you that you can be free if you are willing to work. Further, there are many ways to reduce your rates which would allow you to pay this back even quicker.
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Originally Posted by Apollia I also think what the credit card companies are doing with these fees and interest probably ought to be against the law, so, I don't think I'd be willing to pay them even if I had the means. I'd much rather work on making those fees, etc. against the law, or encourage the credit card companies to go easier on people by organizing a boycott. |
I have had at least one credit card since the age of 16 and in that time(8 years) I have paid not a single penny in finance charges (I have paid 30 dollars for annual fee card). I use my credit cards daily and pay off the balance in full every month. Again you signed the agreement and it is well within your means (If you have health issues that I am not aware of that would prevent you from holding a min wage job then I retract my comment) to pay off the debt, you just don't want to, because you feel it is unjust.
Great discussion I will try to write more tomorrow.