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One of the most viewed post recently on the blog has been the post on those who have been recently waitlisted. Comments ensued and I offered some advice to waitlisted candidates on how they should try and get their regional preferences changed in hopes of increasing their chances of moving off the waitlist. In addition my post Regional Preference Form strongly encouraged readers to select the “willing to go where most needed” option on their regional preference form as to try and avoid the waitlist if they met Teach for America’s standard. There is more on the post about the specifics. But a reader and current TFA teacher who I encourage you all prospective applicants to read mrdtown has been skeptical of this approach and disapproves of being casual when it comes to your regional form. So what I am doing in this post is compiling our back and forth so readers can view and make their own decision on what to do and what they think is best for them when it comes to their regional preference form. I am doing this because its hard to get all of our responses since they span over some posts and it will help you complete or in some cases edit your Regional Preference Form before the Nov. 27th deadline for 2nd applicants!

Enjoy

Unique Blog

Susan asks: “

Ugh, I am one of the many waitlisters. I swear I feel so helpless! I just had no idea that this scenerio was even possible and I am surprised that it was never mentioned by the TFA staff during the interview process.

I might have let my emotions get the best of me a wee little bit, and sent my recruiter and e-mail saying as much and that if felt down right tricky of them not to have mentioned this. As you can imagine, he was gracious but firm and said that if I sent something like that to admissions (which I didn’t) it might be seen as unprofessional and not an example of staying positive in the face of adversity. Yeah, that probably wasn’t the smoothest move… but I was just so frustrated.

So one question, there seems to be some difference in the waitlist letters they send out. Do you know anything about this? One says “you’ve been recommended for acceptance” while the other says “Recommended for the waitlist,” any word on whether one gives you a better chance on getting in. Any ideas about how many people actually get in off the waitlist?

So many question 

Thanks for the post, its nice I’m not the only one going through it!”

Uniqueblog replies:

To ans. your question I don’t know the details on why they have two different letters or even why they have a waitlist outside of my speculations. So what I will tell you is what I think happens and what my understanding is not that of the organization. Last year some folks were waitlisted. I applied in Jan and was put on that list. Then in May the updated folks: one group got emails that said they would most likely get placed if they just stayed on the watilist a little longer, and the others got emails saying they could stay on the waitlist if they liked (until June 1st) but they would most likely not get placed.

I was the latter and it royally pissed me off because I was under the impression from my conversations with TFA folks that everyone on the waitlist was in the same boat. I took it very personally.

They key is to not take it personally. As your recruiter recommended. Yes it seems like they cheated you but respectfully commenting of this in your various surveys is more than enough. I agree waitlisting should be more “advertised”. As for “recommended for acceptance” and “recommended for the waitlist” I think they are doing what they did last year just early. There are two groups now the more likely to get placed and the least likely to get placed. I would guess, keyword guess that if it says recommended for acceptance that means you are more likely to get in than those recommended for the waitlist. Its just logic- acceptance into the corps means you get to teach! If they are recommending you go ahead and teach its prob. an issue of space and district hiring needs in your most preferred region vs. your least preferred. If it says recommended for the waitlist thats what it means- you may have not scored high enough in what they are looking for to be accepted outright. It means that in 2007 for example you would have been admitted since less folks were applying except now so many all stars are applying even the ones that would have made the cut two years ago are not fighting to stay in.

I would recommend no matter what letter you got to go ahead and ask to open up your reg. preferences to willing to be placed anywhere it couldn’t hurt. Then move on to your plan B as if TFA is dead unless they notify you otherwise. Besides that I can’t really see what else you can do. You can always apply next year as I did. What letter did you end up getting the rec. for acceptance or the rec. for waitlist?

let me know if this helps

mrdtown replies: “

The waitlist, as I understood it, is a fairly new thing. Only recently has TFA had more “qualified applicants” than teaching openings…they would like to add a few hundred more corps members, but economic and political conditions make that impossible. You are correct that it isn’t really mentioned in the application/recruitment process…I don’t believe they call up very many people from the waitlist.

I really recommend against taking a pretty flippant approach to where you are teaching, because your corps experience can be VERY different, depending on where you are. Salaries between regions fluctuate by a *lot* of money, as does the cost of living, certification requirements, student loan cancellation, etc. Depending on your $$$ situation, teaching in certain regions may not make sense.

Plus, the kids and the situations are *really* different from place to place.

azalea93 chimes in:

(followed you here from Twitter)

I really admire you for your persistence in trying for Teach for America!

I was dreading being on the waitlist, even more than being outright rejected. Having heard advice similar to yours, I made sure to put a bunch of regions in “Highly preferred”, and the rest in “Preferred”.

Thankfully, I got accepted! I’ll be in Tulsa next year (assuming I accept, which at this point I intend to do), which was a bit of a downer at first, since it was halfway down my list (though still “highly preferred”). Now that I’ve had a chance to do some research, though, Tulsa doesn’t sound half bad!

Unique blog replies to mdrtown: I guess you are right but your analysis works for some and perhaps not others. In my “regional preference form” post I stated that the program is similar in rigor, stress, and difficulty as the peace corps or perhaps the military (minus the PTSD, long deployments, and all the other things that make the military the military and serving in it such a sacrifice). That being said if the basis for your admittance is ease of teaching based on the situations of the children than you really don’t need to be doing such a challenging program. If you being happy as a corps members can be broken by you not being near Malibu, or you not being close to your friends than, (excuse my language) why the hell are you joining? Its a corps. If you really are ready to give all of the hard work and dedication to this program, to your students, and to your life experiences than it shouldn’t matter where you are placed: again its a corps, your service is defined by terms, you get Americorps funding awards because of your service and sacrifice. Do you get my point? What I’m saying is: if you don’t get placed where in your mind you would like to be most will that mean you DO NOT WANT to join? If you still want to be apart of TFA even if you are not in that region than go anywhere they send you. For ex: its easier to stay in the region thats based in my current city (hey no move guys) but I want to be apart of TFA’s mission so much it isnt worth not getting in over not being in my current city so I don’t have to sweat moving my crap.

mrdtown:

“If you being happy as a corps members can be broken by you not being near Malibu, or you not being close to your friends than, (excuse my language) why the hell are you joining?”

You won’t be thinking this after you join, I can assure you.

Yes, it is a Corps, yes it is a major service requirement…but you’re also a human being and you have other needs. The experience between regions is also vastly different. I may want to make the commitment, and strongly believe in the mission…but would I do this for 10,000 less dollars a year, and without loan help (which is the case in some regions)?

Nope. Couldn’t afford to do it. There are a dozen regions where I would rather quit TFA than work in.

Once you start teaching, I think you start to understand the importance of where you live, and the financial/benefit aspects of your region. I think it is awfully presumptions to write off anybody who isn’t willing to teach *everywhere*.

Unique blog:

The goal of my position on the reg. pref. form is to have people weigh the pro’s and con’s of their selectivity.

Will you be willing not get admitted if you cannot be placed in your most desired region.

When you have been finally kicked off the waitlist and its the middle of the summer, you’ve sent off over 200 resumes, cover letters, and applications. Your entire family is living in your in-laws trailer in the middle of nowhere because you are broke and unemployed, the last thing that is going to be on your mind is “im a human being and [I] have other needs” You will be thinking: why on earth was I so picky on that damn regional preference form to the extent that they couldn’t find placement for me in this terrible economy”

I think we have a lot to agree on here. But I am hoping people see this as an investment in their future. After your two years you have new doors open to you such as continuing to be a teacher, going to a great graduate program, or working for an educational policy group making 3x as much. To many that investment in their future is worth that 10,000 less dollars. In addition with the state of the economy many would rather have a job period rather than not have a job due to a lack “loan help”. Many people think that TFA has an unlimited supply of placements in whatever region, as long as you meet their standard. Im trying to counter that notion by saying that placement choices do matter. You know these are tough times and like myself when a lot of these waitlisted folks don’t get jobs come June there isn’t going to be anything out there for them. There is going to be NO help and there is not going to be any making 10k less because they are going to be unemployed.

Im really happy that we are having this conversation because it is giving people two differing views on the Regional Preference forms rather than just my own. I feel that readers will be able to judge their situations on their own. If they find themselves straddled with responsibility already like myself and cannot risk it even if it means a short-term loss or lack of earning potential than they will take this flexible approach. If they are stable and have ample resources and options that I assume you have than they will chose your route of being more selective in their form.

Im not saying that folks who are picky are ass holes or need to be written off. Im just saying they can look forward to a long wait for a job TFA or otherwise.

B got off the bus  and as most days he was carrying something with a gleeful look on his face. Usually its one of those folded fortune tellers with some inappropriate truth written on the opposite fold numbered 6. But today he got his school directory to which he was ecstatic about!

He explained to me that he was going to call the mayor whose child goes to his school. I inquired why: “to tell him I didn’t vote for him”.

I asked “why didn’t you vote for him?”

B replies “because I don’t think African-Americans should be mayor”. – for the record B is white hence why he has me as his black nanny…

“Well B that’s not very nice, of course he should get to be mayor if he gets the most votes”

B shots backs ” Yeah but I don’t like dark skinned people”

I reply: “B you don’t want to say that it will hurt people’s feelings” I interrupt myself and make a mental note to refer this conversation to his mom latter which I did.

Now earlier this year he told me he didn’t want to have a dark-skinned teacher.

His parents aren’t overtly racist. They are just a white upper middle class family and with that comes some natural racism but it’s not purposeful. But in so many ways this is the problem. B has no black friends. The black kids he does come into contact with (I believe all the black kids he come comes into contact with) are at his school. He lives in a high income neighborhood and many African American students I see going to his school are standing outside the lone apartment complex in the schools district waiting for the bus to pick them up off a busy road.

This kid has no contact with African Americans in his personal life besides me. When he does confront race it is in the context of the underperforming students in his class slowing things down, or the black student with holes in his shoes walking alone on “walk to school day”. His parents are absent from the race conversation, not in a hateful way but in a fearful way. His dad is from CT his mom is from Northern VA race isnt talked about in this household- like Michael Steele said- black people can be scary. The quotation below is from Professor Vittrup of Texas Woman’s University who did a survey on race and was featured on NPR

Children are exposed to so much – whether it’s from television which contains a lot of stereotypes, especially racial stereotypes. They hear things at school, from their peers. And then if there are no conversations at home, they form their own opinions. And I think that became very clear when we looked at their perceptions of their parents racial attitudes, where a lot of children just said they didn’t know or they thought that their parents – their white parents didn’t like blacks, even though when we looked at the parents racial attitudes measures, these parents had no problems with black people.

I assume B feels that he should dislike blacks. I also assume that he feels his parents dislike blacks. Therefore B thinks- why the fuck should they be mayor when they aren’t even discussed in our house? B wants and likes the familiar. Everything in his life has come from white folks. Black folks are non-existent except in public schools and in dance shows. You can’t just send your kid to a school that’s diverse and think its going to allow you to avoid talking about race or make your kid colorblind.

It will not. Your kid is just going to carry around the same racial prejudices that have been carried by whites and blacks for generations. I will compare this to another family that I worked for. It was during the time of the 2008 Democratic primary. Obama and Clinton where going head to head. The mom of this family I worked for strongly backed Hillary as did I. She did so because in her mind “this country was not ready to elect a black man as president…that his campaign and if he would win, his presidency would be defined by race rather than policy”

Kid interrupts overhearing our conversation: “mom why?”

Mom: because there are people, white people like me and you, who think stupid things of dark people like our nanny. They are stupid, silly, and wrong. These people have for longer than even I have been alive, thinking they are better than other people who don’t look like them and they really hate people like Obama and I feel that they shouldn’t get to ruin him”.

See! This mom is hedging from race she is bringing it up front and center. Now this mom has a sister-in-law who is black, has bi-racial nephews, and she is liberal. As a result after two years of working with this last family and their two boys, race was never brought up in the terms in which B did the other day. Why? Because it’s not hidden instead its talked about at home positively without the fear of coming off as racist.

Upper income White parents- talk to your kids about race. If not for the kids- do it for your black nanny.

After all my Teach For America posts I can now say that I will be a 2010 Corps member Teaching Secondary English in the MS Delta region! All of this is very exciting. But this victory was well deserved- this was my second time applying for the program and I really ate, slept, and breathed Teach For America for the past year as you can tell by my blog post just since my application was done again in August. Now its over and the hard work begins.

Once accepted TFA bombards you with more stuff to do of course. I decided to print off all the PDF’s last night because I was too excited to sit at my computer and read them all. After a nights sleep I am digesting it all. All this reading has a little voice in my head saying: “what have we gotten ourselves into” as I read about institute training and being a teacher. It has helped volunteering at my local KIPP school. Coincidentally last week I was assisting a TFA english teacher in his classroom at KIPP so I do feel slightly confident despite  my anxiety.

I do wish the best luck to everyone who reads this blog. There will be more TFA post in the future this time from the perspective of a corps member not an applicant. Its a tough program to get into so don’t take it too personally. At times I did and it really wasnt worth it. Even if you got denied or waitlisted always know that you can try again next year like I did. In the meantime spend your life living the ideals of what Teach For America looks for in applicants. Volunteer, bust your ass at something meaningful, face and overcome a challenge.

With more to come:

Regards

Yesterday at about 6:00pm myself and hundreds of others were notified of our Teach for America status. Some were accepted, others were rejected, and some were waitlisted.  I was accepted last night but last year I got the later two options. My wife was rejected, and I was waitlisted only to be fully rejected on May 30th. So when I got my acceptance yesterday it was a bitter-sweet moment. In a way I know that re-applying and doubling my efforts made my application stronger and my interview day better. I was excited to be admitted into the corps after pursuing it for two years. But I was sad for not only those rejected but for those waitlisted.

Rejection in a lot of ways is easier. It allows one to go ahead and move on in life. In this terrible economy its scary because for most of you who are college graduates this means that one job option just got shut off. But waitlisted is even more problematic. Not only are you not in the corps you are in limbo. In your mind you think you can get in and you have this optimism but the uncertainty hinders your life. You can’t really move on from TFA because you weren’t outright rejected but you can’t fully embrace it because it is very uncertain that you will get in. For those who are waitlisted I feel your pain! (Waitlisted = limbo its not even in my spell check and I hate spelling it wait-list but oh well its a compound word in my book)

So many people don’t get it. “Its the economy stupid” it sucks and I always hated it how people would claim “well at least you were waitlisted not rejected”. It was very frustrating because for months I carried around the hope that they would call me and send me an email saying they found a place for me. On top of that I had to watch folks who applied in February get in even though I was waiting! I only have two points of advice:

1)  How bad do you want this job? I would suggest sending admissions an email asking to change your regional preferences to “willing to be placed where needed”. That way you wont be waiting for positions to open up in one city you will be out there nationwide waiting rather than just in NYC for example. Last year I tried doing a little networking but that offered no results so don’t go that route. I called regional offices asking about their specific placement details, I walked in to my local regional office, in total I probably contacted about two dozen TFA staff members across the country trying to actively figure out a solution to get off the waitlist. It didn’t work! Tell admissions you want to be placed were needed and move on with your life.

2) Waitlisters are updated throughout the year on their status. Don’t wait for those days like you did your acceptance notification day you will just stress yourself out. Assume you got rejected and do other things with your life besides obsess about how to get off the waitlist. Apply for other jobs. Have a solid plan B, C, and D for that matter. I graduated and was unemployed for four months. My wife, daughter and myself blew through our savings and got in debt. I finally got a nanny job. To my last point if it all falls through and you are living in your parents spare room working at Starbucks: Apply first thing next year. Second time around is a lot easier and I think that TFA respects that you came back and tried again.

Good Luck Waitlisters again I feel you.

http://twitter.com/uniqueblog

Currently there are only 8 followers after I went through and got rid of the spam ones (Sorry FOREX over the counter currency trading). Tweeting occurs a lot more than blog entries and are done on the iPhone more so than blogging. In addition I’m lining up a giveaway in the next couple of weeks one will be for the blog and the other for Twitter followers! So keep posted.

-Uniqueblog

Social networking is always interesting to watch as it grows and evolves. After watching this video there is some agreement. But I want to point to the niches of social networking sites. When I started college in 2004 Facebook was just starting up. By Spring 2005 I had my own Facebook account and at this time Facebook was only open to college students and faculty at particular universities. I would log on to ask my buddy from class what the homework was or find is telephone number and send him or her a text about meeting up for lunch. It was a great way to connect to classmates and peers at college.

Facebook then was the equivalent of what LinkedIn is now. It was explicitly open to only college students and that made it special. It was an elite enclave only open to those who were currently in college not the high school drop out you never really liked that much anyway. That person had Myspace. And Myspace in my young and immaturity at the time always associated with the “rift raft”. The folks who worked at Wal-Mart and took their cashed paychecks to Hot Topic. Facebook was clean and organized, no loud profile music. At the time all you could do was add your profile picture, add some info about yourself, and write on walls. By Spring 2006 you could add pictures to the site which I remember being huge addition. Soon it was opened up to high school students which infuriated many.

Finally two things happened almost simultaneously. Facebook stopped marketing itself as a social networking site for the young in college but opened itself up to the general public. Then they added the infamous news feed. It lost its special place. Soon Myspace was abandoned and everyone flocked to Facebook where my inbox was flooded with friend requests.

Now I am finding little need for Facebook. I prefer the anonymous nature 0f my blog and of twitter. That is the benefit. Twitter serves a niche and allows one to create their own social networked rather than it being created by them. Twitter is a marketplace of ideas, while Facebook seeks to do this with its news feed it is frequently clogged with status updates from friends and family you rather not talk to but am too shy to remove as friends. I much prefer twitter where I am able to simply ask to follow only those I truly enjoy to listen to. It’s very informal and in that informality I get lots of great nuggets of information.

In an instant I am forwarded to a webpage or news story having to do with something im interested in rather than realizing how many dumb Republican friends I have via Facebook’s news feed. Don’t get me wrong Facebook does have its practical advantages but outside my young college days it just doesn’t work for what I want out of the web anymore. My blog and twitter are all the social networking I need and I can get it without being haunted by my middle school crush or my sister in-law.

A month ago today I wrote a post titled: What to do while you are waiting to see if you got into Teach for America. But I am a victim of the waiting blues. Its almost all consuming which is hard to admit. Yesterday I was realizing how many things in my life am I putting on hold until I find out next week if I was admitted into the corps. Here are some examples

• What to get my wife for her birthday? I dunno just wait to see if we got TFA and then if you do get something really nice…
• Im going to go ahead and subscribe to the paper… NO wait to see if you get admitted because you might have to move before the minimum subscription is up
• I really need a new computer I should start shopping around… No wait because why are you going to need a computer for if you are not teaching?

The list goes on almost forever as the anxiety grows and grows. Since this is the second time around I feel even more nervous. In many ways I feel that this is my only shot at being something in life. Since my wife and I found out we were expecting our Jr. year in college life in many ways has been a constant struggle. I cant help to feel that these daily battles have weighed on my pervious academic performance and my once amazing ability to wow and amaze in job interviews etc. My star doesn’t shine as bright as the others who apply to a program like Teach for America but I hope my explanation of the challenges I have had to face and overcome, my commitment to going above and beyond through enhanced extracurriculars in my last two years of college, and my ability to maintain my current responsibilities perhaps not a 4.0 GPA but still a B average can come through to the selection committee.

For many of those applying this may be the best shot they may have at getting a job post graduation, just like for myself this is my only shot to move out of the nanny profession for soon even if I decided to apply for other jobs when the economy gets better employes will see “nanny” and no real work experience the same problem many of my peers are facing.  A recent study found that half of all college graduates are finding themselves unemployed after graduation. Truth is hardly anybody is hiring and TFA may be the best and only way to get a job for many.

With these grim numbers what are we to do besides “bite our nails off”! Ill love to hear from others that are in the same situation and we will see what happens next week!

Starbucks sent me an email regarding how the new starbucks gold memberships will be changing. The Gold memberships used to be a card you would get for $25 and for a year you would get

• A free drink when you purchased your membership @ a Starbucks
• 10% off all purchases at Starbucks stores
• Free 2 hr. of wireless internet daily
• Free drink on your birthday

I really liked the membership program! I used to go to Starbucks everyday and spend between 4-8 dollars. Recently I purchased an automatic espresso maker that was marked down in my local Starbucks store for $499. With my discount of 10% I saved more than $50 on the machine. I also used the gold membership to get my whole bean coffee for the machine and for merchandise on the store that is also on sale from time to time. However They have changed the program to not give 10% off and to make all gold holders, gold membership card holders after their 1 year anniversary comes up.

The gold cards will be more like the regular starbucks cards and give you free syrups or brewed coffee refills. One benefit is free drinks but only after you have purchased 15 drinks at Starbucks. If you frequent Starbucks often and buy many items in the store this is not that great of a deal. I figured Starbucks did the math and realized that folks were getting a lot more mileage out of the 10% than they expected them too. If you are spending $4 on a drink each day and after 15 days you get one free that is the equivalent of a 6% discount a lot of people spend even more than this. As a former Barista I can tell you that daily Starbucks runs can cost folks on average around $4.50. So you save $4.50 for every 60 you spend vs. saving $6.50 for every $67 you spend. If you buy larger items weekly such as whole bean coffee 0r if you buy machines and coffee mugs this new program really isn’t that beneficial. I don’t know why they are changing the program to be so complicated. I would gladly pay even more to have partner discounts! But I assume they will make more money from this new model in addition its free rather than the fee the old membership program has.

Here is the email:

As a Starbucks Gold card holder, your frequent visits mean
a lot to us. We started this program to give you the
extra-special treatment you deserve – and we’re always
thinking of new ways to improve your experience and
reward your loyalty.

With our first charter memberships approaching their
one-year expiration date, we wanted to let you know about
several improvements to the Starbucks Gold program. On
December 26, 2009, we are evolving both of our loyalty
programs into one – My Starbucks Rewards – and we think
you’ll like it even better.

You will continue to enjoy your 10% discount and benefits
for your full membership period (12 months) according to
the program terms and conditions. In other words, if you
purchased a current Starbucks Gold membership in July
2009, you will be eligible to receive current Starbucks Gold
benefits through your July 2010 anniversary date. You won’t
need to renew because when the new program launches,
upon expiration you will automatically be transitioned into
the Gold Level of My Starbucks Rewards and your welcome
packet, including your personalized card, will be sent to
you. Please make sure your account is updated, including
your mailing address, by clicking here.

So why are we changing a good thing? We’ve heard from a
lot of you on ways we can make the program better. As a
result, the new program will be free. While it will not
provide the 10% discount, it will offer benefits such as free
flavored syrups or brewed coffee refills that many of you
have asked for. Best of all, the new program will recognize
and reward you for every visit with the ability to earn free,
drinks. That’s right – free drinks for something you are
doing anyway – visiting Starbucks! To find out more visit
starbucks.com/rewards.

In the meantime, we hope you’ll continue to enjoy your
Starbucks Gold benefits through the term of your
membership.

We’re excited about these coming changes – a better rewards program, with no annual fee, and a variety of benefits – and we hope you will be too. Stay tuned for the coming details. Until then, we’ll see you at Starbucks.

Regards,

Your Starbucks Rewards Team

IMO, this is a great option if you are in your 40′s with a house and you have hundreds of thousands of dollars in credit card debt. But with my own credit nightmare three years ago, looking back at it,  rushing to bankruptcy as advised would have been the worse move in hindsight.

My personal nightmare started in Fall 2006 when defaulted on 12 credit card accounts almost simultaneously. Since 2004 when I graduated high school, I had slowly accumulated nearly 16K in credit card debt as a means to pay my way through college- tuition, books, etc- and had no means of paying it off as a broke college student working only work study jobs.

I strongly feel my own success in getting out of this debt nightmare  is because my largest account had a balance of only $5,000.Most had small balances of $1000 or so. Don’t get me wrong, this money still went a long way in the day-to-day life of a college student, but in the grand scheme, this is small beans. After just purchasing a  new car at a 17.99% interest rate, having it cost over $200 a month to insure it, AND on top of the $400 note, having just moved off campus to an apartment alone, having to pay my own rent and utilities for the first time, I was broke!

Almost overnight I quit paying all my credit cards. Being young and selfish, I really loved the car and didn’t want them to take it away, so I keep up on its payments. Everything else credit wise went down the tubes though. I didn’t talk to (or pay) my creditors at all for almost a year dispute 20 to 30 phone calls a day and threatening letters I received.

While I felt like a criminal at the time, considering the small amount of debt I defaulted on, looking back it may have been a wise choice. Not communicating with my creditors AND most importantly not sending them a single payment, made the accounts charge offs and sent to the collection agencies quickly. In the end ALL of the accounts got sent to collection agencies. A year later I sought advice from attorneys at my campus’ legal services. They suggested I file but if I choose not to the fact that I hadn’t made any payments for a year and having no intention to would pretty much have the same impact as bankruptcy.

My FICO score was dreadfully low. However, that car I bought I was still making on time payments on (and using wuite a lot as well!). More on that in a minute. But after doing some online research I decided to send my collectors cease and desist letters via certified mail. I kept all of the information regarding each account and using the FDCPA (federal law protecting consumers from collection agencies) I demanded collection agencies send me a SIGNED CREDIT CARD AGREEMENT. These agencies had 30 days from receipt of the letter to provide the original signed agreement and not a single one of them did. In the meantime I kept meticulous letters of postmarked certified letter slips, receipts from the post office, and the bogus collection agency statements demanding payment. The calls almost stopped and for the next year every time an account was sold to a new agency who thought they could get some blood out of me, I simply sent them a version of my letter demanding that they follow FDCPA, that they cease and desist, and that the debt was not valid since the agency they purchased the debt from failed to validate.

Fast forward to today. My FICO score is nearing the 600 mark. The reasons for this high score three years after failing to pay all my credit cards is first my on time payments on my car note. Secondly, I was able to piggy back on my wife’s credit cards which we have managed to pay on time and keep balances at zero (until our recent unemployment spell) to which they are now being paid off in earnest. Finally, I have three credit accounts of my own with low limits that are in excellent standing including a secured card from Bank of America one of the companies I defaulted on a nearly 5k balance.

If I would have filed I strongly think that my score would be dramatically lower. It would have also prohibited me from opening up my current accounts and would stop me way in the future from getting much-needed loans even if the past three or five years are of exemplary credit worthiness. In the months after I defaulted I never flinched when the big envelopes came which falsely “verified the debt”. I never budged when they came from big law firms. Many people get scared and send them money in hopes of making it better. But it only starts the cycle over again making them hound you when you don’t stick to your payment plan. It also restarts your statute of limitations.

As I write this, my statute of limitations for all of my cards has come. In most states its three years but this only applies if you remain in the same state AND don’t make any payments of any amount to a collection agency on your debt. I did not and now I cannot be legally pursued for the money by the original creditor or the collection agency. There is this image that people have of them being brought to court. This will happen if you follow what I did and you are carrying a $100,000 credit card balance. But if you are in your 20′s with no property and 10-20k in credit card debt than I strongly suggest you consider this route of “bankruptcy on your own terms”. It will make it possible to get back to normal sooner rather than having dead weight on your credit report. Lenders won’t touch you for 10 years after you file, vs my situation where lenders see a small blemished overcome with credit cards from the same lenders to which I defaulted on and a rising score.

Do not be intimidated and think there is no way out. Yes bankruptcy will end the calls but so will your own actions and research. In these trying times there are millions of people defaulting on their credit cars and ill bet you there are hundreds and thousands with larger balances than you. Creditors are not going to take you to court for an unpaid 3k when they have a Joe in CA with an unpaid balance of 120k.