I’ve been in a situation before where I felt like I had no control over my debt. What happened is that I carried a balance on three credit cards, on which I was able to pay the minimum or above every month. Then, I got sick and had to have a major operation. Recovering from the operation led to me having to take unpaid leave from my job for several months. It was frustrating, because the credit card companies would call asking for payment, but there wasn’t anything I could do. They were very inflexible. What I should have done was worked out an Individual Voluntary Arrangement, aka i.v.a. with a debt counseling company. They would have had the bargaining power to get somewhere with the credit card companies so that I could make a monthly payment that I could afford. As it was, the credit card companies refused to negotiate with me directly and my credit got completely ruined. As I never want to find myself in that situation again, I no longer have credit cards. Still, now I am stuck paying higher interest rates for things like car loans because of that past situation. I wish I had known how to deal with it at the time so things didn’t get so bad.