TRYING TO HELP MY BROTHER FIX CREDIT
My brother has turned his own world upside down. Right out of high school, he got like a million credit card offers, of which he must have taken advantage of a lot of them. He was away at school when my mom got mail for him from the credit card companies and I guess he changed the address to his college addy so that she wouldn't see all the notices coming in from different credit card companies. Well, he decided that he would work to pay off his credit card debt, but apparently he wasn't behaving really responsibly with his cards, and maxed most of them out paying bills and buying stuff for his apartment. He could only work part time, but that obviously was because spending was his full time job. When he was home over Christmas, he told me about his dilemma, and I couldn't believe it when he told me that he had $10,000 worth of debt. I knew he was in way over his head, but he made me swear that I wouldn't tell my parents, so I kept my mouth shut. I helped him gather information online about fixing your credit and we tried out this Fico Score Calculator and basically figured out what we both already knew, which was that he was in some serious trouble. I tried to tell him that they can only fix credit if you get some of the bills paid off, and so he decided to cut back his course load, so that he could work more, but of course it wasn't really enough. Well, my mother apparently just got wind of this situation and she was really pissed, I mean she was totally losing it with me, so I can't even imagine what she said to him. I didn't tell her that I already knew about this, not that it really matters because that wouldn't help the situation anyway. I am feeling guilty that I didn't tell her the trouble that Josh was in, but I couldn't break his trust. Anyway, I guess I will have to live with that decision. I just hope that he realizes that it wasn't me who spilled the beans about his situation. I called him yesterday and I still haven't heard back from him, but it is my guess that if he already spoke with mom then he probably is not answering the phone because when momma ain't happy ain't nobody happy!