Negotiate and Settle Your Debts – A Debt Settlement Strategy: Learn how to settle debts as low as 20 cents on the dollar (Volume 1)
Negotiate and Settle Your Debts – A Debt Settlement Strategy: Learn how to settle debts as low as 20 cents on the dollar (Volume 1)
Considering debt settlement? Negotiate and Settle Your Debts guides you to an extremely inexpensive way to do your own negotiating and settling of credit card debt. Save thousands of dollars and improve the quality of your life with this very informative gem of a book. Contents are sample Debt Settlement letters , Instructions on the timelines, How and when to start negotiating with your creditors, What happens each month you go late, Credit Repair Letters, Information about the Statute of Limi
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(out of 32 reviews)
List Price: $ 11.79
Price: $ 11.79
Blowing the Whistle on Credit Card Debt (Winning the Collection Game)
Imagine telling a debt collector that he has the right to remain silent and that anything he says during his collection call can and will be used against him in a court of law. This book is not only outrageously empowering, but equally the most comprehensive and educational text within the series of my Winning the Collection Game volumes.
Rating: (out of 2 reviews)
List Price: $ 32.95
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How To Settle Your Debts
- ISBN13: 9780979748301
- Condition: NEW
- Notes: Brand New from Publisher. No Remainder Mark.
How To Settle Your Debts is an all-inclusive enlightening guide to help individuals, families and small businesses eliminate debt without bankruptcy, debt consolidation and the damage they can cause. You learn how to legitimately eliminate debt and totally improve your life while maintaining your dignity and your reputation. The author, a CPA and a former collection agency owner, offers solutions based on his insider knowledge of the debt collection establishment. He gives you the know-how, the
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(out of 18 reviews)
List Price: $ 18.95
Price: $ 12.88
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Review by BruceFL for Negotiate and Settle Your Debts – A Debt Settlement Strategy: Learn how to settle debts as low as 20 cents on the dollar (Volume 1)
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To me, this is exactly what a how-to book should be:
Well-organized, concise, easy to follow, and based on the real world- not theory. The very best how-to book would also be contemporary with up-to-date examples of success.
Mandy Akridge’s book meets all these criterion, imo.
While I had done some online research into debt settlement, the advice you find can be contradictory, the more you study it. Also, most people giving advice on website forums I suspect haven’t really negotiated any debt at all.
Instead, they’re often assuming what should work, with no personal experience to back it up.
However, Akridge shows you recent actual credit card letters from her negotiated settlements. And the amount she was able to save is huge. Its all in black and white.
The author walks you through the process step-by-step. You end up knowing what to expect, and what issues you’ll face. To me, there were many pearls of wisdom and things that just plain made sense. She doesn’t seem to sugar-coat anything, but also leaves you feeling pretty optimistic about settling your debts in this manner.
Value-wise I just don’t see how you can go wrong. Debt settlement companies charge a fortune, (I know, I looked into it) other professional services are even more expensive. This is literally a `steal’ by comparison.
I’m now convinced you can settle your debts by following this book and I’m glad the author shared her personal experiences.
Review by T for Negotiate and Settle Your Debts – A Debt Settlement Strategy: Learn how to settle debts as low as 20 cents on the dollar (Volume 1)
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First let me say your book is truly a light at the end of a tunnel. I have enormous debt due to a very bad divorce, laid off for 7 months still without a job, a single mom, and yet prior to all of this, I had 0 balances and never late. Like so many others, it’s been nothing short of a nightmare.
This book has given me the ability to take control without legal counsel and I cannot thank Mandy enough for this advice. I am still at the point of negotiation with my 8 cards and my progress is just as she has mapped out.
It’s so easy to understand and to implement, it’s a must have.
Review by John B. Nuchols for Negotiate and Settle Your Debts – A Debt Settlement Strategy: Learn how to settle debts as low as 20 cents on the dollar (Volume 1)
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I bought this book in January because I have over $29,000 in debt. I have used all the sample letters and used all the advice given in the book. Including sending letters to stop getting calls, and using the advice never to negotiation over the phone on settlements. I even got a internet fax machine that allows me to fax 300 pages a month using my computer for less than 10.00 a month. Its helped greatly to receive and counter settlements quickly. I currently have offers to settle between 30%-50% on my account but using the counter settlement letters to get closer to 20% settlements. I just received a fax an hour ago for a settlement I offer for 20 cent on the dollar on a $7,000 collection for Bank of America. “UPDATE” I have 8 accounts in collections and I have settled with four account in the past four months, and averaging 29 cents on the dollar for full settlements. I borrowed 5,000 from grandparents to make full settlement offers. I will be completely debt free in feb 2011.This book has saved me thousands of dollars! BUY IT!
Review by Motivated One for Negotiate and Settle Your Debts – A Debt Settlement Strategy: Learn how to settle debts as low as 20 cents on the dollar (Volume 1)
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The debt settlement strategies I learned from Negotiate and Settle Your Debts were nothing short of AMAZING. After a couple of failed businesses and a few poor choices I found myself in over my head and over $50,000 in credit card debt. With the strategies that I learned from Negotiate and Settle Your Debts, I am now in the process of settling a $15,500 line of credit for only $3200! Best of all I have positioned myself to totally settle my other cards for as low as 20 cents on the dollar! I don’t know what I would have done without this book. I feel like the weight of the world has been lifted off my shoulders. It has truly saved me hundreds of thousands of dollars in payments and interests as well as years of stress. For those of you in need of some serious debt relief, I have three words for you; Buy The Book!
Sincerely,
Motivated One
Review by Sarah C. for Negotiate and Settle Your Debts – A Debt Settlement Strategy: Learn how to settle debts as low as 20 cents on the dollar (Volume 1)
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This is such a great book written simply to the point with step by step instructions of how to negotiate with creditors and supportive information about how the banks work. It is like having a coach. Of all the books out there on the subject, I found this to be the most helpful and the author is very sincere in helping others achieve good results based on her own personal experience. A must read on this subject. Thank you Mandy for sharing many valuable tips!
Review by Ernest for Blowing the Whistle on Credit Card Debt (Winning the Collection Game)
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The information in this book is incredible. It is the best book I have ever read on credit card debt and how to get rid of it. I have used the information I learned in this book and it works! I highly recommend it!
Review by David R. Mills for Blowing the Whistle on Credit Card Debt (Winning the Collection Game)
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An outstanding individual who will personally help you for a nominal fee free yourself from the game being played on you.
Review by D. Watson for How To Settle Your Debts
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I got this book because of the outstanding reviews it already had. In hindsight, I suspect not all of them are legitimate reviews. It’s difficult to imagine anyone could read the advice in this book, put it to use, and actually gain significant benefit. Though the book’s description sounds very promising, I found that it didn’t deliver the information it promised. Many of the scenarios in the book are unrealistic and make unhelpful assumptions. Over and over again the author directs the reader to research topics elsewhere without providing even basic information. For example: “Credit reports are difficult to read and even more difficult to understand. There are some excellent books available to help you with this.” While this book is not specifically about dealing with your credit report, it seems that a bit more information about credit reports would have been provided.
Most of the advice is common sense (live within your means) or biased against any course of action other than settling with creditors. The author writes from the viewpoint that bankruptcy is the worst thing you could possibly do, but never backs up that claim with any information. I was left with the impression that the author himself isn’t really sure what effect bankruptcy has.
In fact, the author’s pervasive use of generalities and unrealistic suggestions made me think he doesn’t actually know that much about credit (despite his alleged qualifications). For example, he repeatedly suggests bargaining with your creditors that you will pay part of your debt if they remove negative information they have already reported to the credit bureaus. But the author seems oblivious to the fact that the credit bureaus have specific rules against creditors doing this. Numerous such suggestions ruin the author’s credibility.
At best, this book might be helpful as motivation to action for someone who lives beyond his or her means. But if your debts are the result of unfortunate and unavoidable events in your life, and you are ready to take decisive action to get your debt under control and your credit back on track, you will find this book preachy and unhelpful.
Review by Stanley Brown for How To Settle Your Debts
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Using the information contained in the book, especially to have Patience and Persistence, I have settled 2 credit card debts, and saved $16,000 from what Credit Card #1 and Credit Card #2 were demanding. They gave in before I wore out. Having gone through this, I now feel extremely confident on settling the remaining debt for less then the current balance. Using the advice contained in Norman’s book WILL work as long as don’t give in until you feel you have reached a fair settlement.
Review by Joseph C. McDaniel for How To Settle Your Debts
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This is not, in my opinion, a very useful book for the ordinary consumer debtor.
It’s also a little sloppy and fast and loose with facts and law. For instance, on page ten there’s a “legal note” that asserts “in a bankruptcy, an unsecured debt that has been converted to a judgment retains its unsecured character and gets no preferential treatment in a distribution.” Well, not exactly. First, a judgment that’s recorded at the County Recorders office in my state, Arizona, where I’ve practiced bankruptcy law for thirty years, becomes a judgment lien upon real property owned by the judgment debtor in that County.
And that’s just one example. But what bothers me more about the book is the assumption that it’s fairly easy to negotiate credit card type debts. Frankly, it once was. About thirty years ago.
But these days a consumer who tries to talk to the credit card company with whom he is trying to negotiate is just as likely as not to get a call center in a country where English is not a first language. And trying to negotiate with folks there is all but impossible, because they’re paid very few rupees per hour, and can only do what they are instructed to do on their call center flow chart.
In fact, credit card debts are among the most difficult debts to negotiate away, for the simple reason that there are a bunch of them in an ordinary situation. And to make the problems go away, all of them have to be willing to play ball. And the 80/20 rule applies in negotiations with a bunch of creditors. If you have 10 creditors, and all of them have to agree to get you to your goal, there will be two that never want to see things your way.
And another thing: ordinary consumer debtors, in my experience, don’t have the mind-set and psychological balance to deal with negotiating their own debts away, or down. And one reason for that is that the debtor who negotiates for himself has no professional objectivity, and that clouds his judgment.
Another idea that this book pushes is that workouts with credit card companies and collectors can be done by the consumer borrowers themselves, and that in the process they will get the credit card companies to remove the derogatory information in their credit reports. I believe it will happen at about the same time the temperature in a place that bad people may go after the end of their lives drops below the point at which water become solid.
Another odd concept in the book is that bankruptcy is financial suicide, and that most credit card and unsecured debt problems should be easily dealt with by negotiation. I simply disagree, and it’s not just because I’m an Arizona bankruptcy lawyer. I’ve seen people with overwhelming debt rebuild their credit and their lives after bad luck or bad decisions forced them to file, and they get on with their life just fine (note: it is absolutely correct that a bankruptcy, whether a Chapter 7, 13, 11 or 12 is a very big deal, and should never be gone into lightly. That said, you shouldn’t take penicillin when you have the hiccups, but if you have pneumonia, you better head to the penicillin man.) Also take a look at Bounce Back from Bankruptcy, also available on Amazon, to see exactly how difficult it is to reestablish credit.
Is there anything good about this book? Sure.
For instance, the author strongly suggests that consumer debtors make a budget and learn their “nut”, and learn to live within their means. Bravo.
But after I say that, I look back at another “legal note” that’s misleading: “Judgments against corporations, limited partnerships and limited liability companies are normally not enforceable against individual owners, stockholders or limited partners and should have no effect on their personal credit record.”
Well, that’s true as far as it goes. But in the real world of small business, the primary owners of the business almost always have to personally guarantee substantial debt incurred by the business. So ignoring a threatened lawsuit because of the “legal note” above would get the average business owner with the average lawsuit against his business into substantial hot water, because that lawsuit would normally name him as a defendant as well.
So read this book, because it’s interesting and because the author is clearly passionate and sincere. But before you take ANY of his advice, talk to an “av” rated bankruptcy lawyer, or a bankruptcy attorney who has a 10.0 rating from AVVO.com, or a Martindale AV rated bankruptcy lawyer, and read a lot of other books, because if your plan is based exclusively on this book, you may be stepping on a land mine.
p.s. as I write this postscript, there is a raging debate in Congress over a provision in the Bankruptcy Code that may, after amendment, permit the stripdown of some OR all mortgages on residential real property. Will that statute pass? Listen, I’ve practiced bankruptcy law in Phoenix, Arizona for about thirty years, and I’ve watched a long series of amendments to the “New Code” of 1979; and I’ve watched as Congress debated in the past. The 2005 amendments took about a decade to work their way through Congress. So MAYBE the Bankruptcy Code is about to change a lot. And MAYBE it’s not. But if you’re contemplating bankruptcy in Phoenix, Arizona, or anywhere else, you should be aware that the law is currently MAYBE about to change in a way that could be helpful to debtors, IF they qualify and are willing to put up with a Chapter 13 bankruptcy (which makes a root canal look like fun).
Review by Scott Mack for How To Settle Your Debts
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My debts are running my life and I was going to file for bankruptcy until I found this book. You can tell this guy knows what he is talking about. I especially liked the references to real life situations and all the helpful hints he provides. After reading the book, I’m sure I can get creditors to work with me because it’s better for them. I also like the idea of doing the dirty work myself rather than using a debt counselor. This way I know my best interests will come first and I don’t think I’ll ever let myself get into this kind of debt problem again. Now, I’m going to read it again and start doing what has to be done. This is a terrific book. The best $18 I’ve ever spent.
Review by P. Carrabba for How To Settle Your Debts
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I purchased this book to learn how to help my mother who is having financial problems. The advice in this book is priceless. The knowledge I learned from this book gave me the ability to make sound, educated decisions. The author doesnt pull any punches and tells it like it is. If you know anyone who is thinking about bankruptcy, buy them this book first!