Do NOT hire me as a financial advisor

I got a letter in the mail yesterday from Chase MasterCard (my biggest creditor) with a settlement offer. I called them, found out that it's legit, only it has to be paid in a lump sum. Long story short, I make another phone call and now I'm pre-approved for a debt consolidation loan from the First National Bank of Parents.

My discover card is only $25 away from paid off, so there's some more good news. However, now it gets weird.

Back in 2001, I signed up with a credit couseling service, which promised to eliminate my debt by August 2006. It's now March of 2006, and my Chase card is as high as it ever was, mostly due to my payment schedule for the counseling service and the due dates for Chase never really synced up. I've had late charges and interest rate hikes out the wazoo. So far, I've been in denialfor the most part and felt powerless to change anything for the rest. I've been fucking stupid and now I have to pay for it.

Now it gets weirder.

I'm now feeling even stupider for having signed up for this Visa card about 7 years ago. It was, at the time, a radical idea: nan internet-based banking service. No brick & morter institutions anywhere in the world, just on the internet. I was 22, and a fucking idiot.

When I signed with the couseling service, they told me that they were on top of it all. They would keep track of everything. So, when I didn't receive a statment from my Visa card for a while, I figured THIS is somehing that they know about. Well, a $300 discrepency for my Discover card and a nearly $5,500 discrepency for the Chase card later...coupled with the fact that the bank that held my Visa card was closed down back in 2002...means that I have long since passed being screwed and am coming up quickly on royally fucked.

Doing some Google searching on what happened to my Visa account, I've found out that about a third of the seized accounts have been bought out by another company, and they have taken over collection duties on the accounts at inflated interest rates. The rest of the accounts have been paid off by you, the taxpayer.

So, with the mystery of the missing statements somewhat solved, The question remains: Why didn't I get anything in the mail regarding this bank closure? Simple. It was an internet-based company and the letter was sent, naturally, by EMAIL! At the time of the bank's closure, I no longer had the email address in their records. So, FUCK YOU, PAPERLESS SOCIETY!!!

Tomorrow, I must contact the counseling service and inform them of the buyout offer for the Chase card, and ask them to figure out if A) My money's been going to some bank I've never heard of and they're screwing me on the interest charges and not telling me, or B) the federal government bought out my debt and my money's been going to God-knows-who-or-where.

However...

This Visa debt is still on my credit report, but given that the company went belly-up, I doubt they left anyone behind to clear that up. The more I think about it, if that job exists, it's gotta rank high on the list of worst jobs in the world (right up there with "assistant crack-whore"). The company is in ruins, the boss is under indictment, and you're left behind to answer the phones. Something tells me a raise might be out of the question, dude.

Tomorrow, I should have more answers. until then: AAAAAAAAAAAARRRRRRRRRGGGGGGHHHHHH!!!!!!!