For a long time I stayed away from the GOODF forums. I have always felt really sad for desperate people trying to use desperate cargo cult soverign remedies to get out of debts. I mean, as much as I am all about personal responsibility, I understand sometimes bad things happen: you get hurt without insurance. You have to buy a car to commute to your job because the other one breaks down. You lose your job. There are lots of ways you might end up in debts you cannot realistically pay that aren't of the "buying the 60 inch screen TV on a minimum wage job" variety.
But I have to hand it to the GOODF posters, tonight I went and looked and am just kind of shocked at the total disconnect from reality. This is probably my favorite:
http://www.getoutofdebtfree.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=141&t=46584
A GOODF success! Someone just decides to flat out stop paying their debts and now are declaring success because they aren't getting as many debt collection calls and letters as they used to be getting. What. The. Hell? You could have done that without sending all this legal gibberish paperwork. Hell, if you ignore any debt long enough they'll stop calling - its not like we have debtor prisons anymore.
I often think that in 90% of cases, like the one above, if these idiots would just follow REAL debt relief options like consumer bankruptcy their lives would be so much better. Consumer bankruptcy may stay on your credit for 10 years but all that debt is wiped off immediately, and realistically you can start getting credit again if you are responsible in as little as 3 years.
Instead I am seeing GOODF posters who have for 5, 10, or 15 years engaged in this reckless cycle of abusing consumer credit, refusing to pay their bills, then engaging in these bizarre debt relief scams to try to get out of it. These people are literally shooting themselves in the foot, and they are bringing a bad name to all the people out there who get in debt due to reasons beyond their control who try to fix it through legitimate and legal means.
