I ran up a debt of about 18K from 99-2002. I had a friend that worked for one of these credit counseling services (located here in SD) and bc of him, they managed my accounts without service charges. I guess I was a lucky one.
Bottom line is that they negotiated my rates down to about 9-12% each and as I got bonuses I pay off the higher interest cards one by one. They claimed it would take me 6 years to pay it off, I did it in 3 (2005). My FICO is back up above 720 after all of this so if you make the right decisions to resolve your situation, you can pull out of it rather quickly.
I recommend she work her way through trying to negotiate and pay them off without the “easy way out” approach of BK. I learned a lot from the experience in money management, so did my wife.
Looks like the company i used went out of business but I sifted through my emails and remembered that after I paid off a few of my creditors, I took the initiative to call the 2 that I had left and negotiated a rate with them on my own and left the credit counseling program.
