Debt Cleanse: How To Settle Your Unaffordable Debts For Pennies On The Dollar (And Not Pay Some At All)

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I decided to check this book out because who doesn’t have debt issues? Big or small, from mortgages to student loans, debt affects an astonishingly large percentage of the population. Newbery’s Debt Cleanse is the culmination of one man’s experience with the cruel conqueror of idealistic youth. They get you young today. It’s a popular gig on college campuses, little kiosks, or table-stands scattered around, especially at career fairs and the like, with credit card offers. Then there are the loans to pay for college itself. It’s a shame, ’tis the sheer cost of schooling these days. And it’s not enough to have ‘just’ a bachelor’s degree today. No, you now need a Master’s or a PhD. Want a decent car? Dig that hole deeper. Want a house for your fledgling family? Who needs to eat?

From the individual citizen, to the country itself, debt threatens to consume us in misery, self-recrimination, and despair. It destroys relationships, seeding stress into every little choice. It fosters desperate moves like lying, cheating, theft, or worse. People may turn to extreme measures, such as gambling or dealing with loan sharks that generates even more debt. It’s a truly sickening, hopeless feeling to feel you must forgo necessary medical care or stay in unsafe housing or drive unsafe cars or be unable to get a decent education because you will never have enough money.

Newbery offers solutions, loopholes, and advice for any debt-induced situation. The first few chapters involve introduction, and things to do pre-cleanse, like putting major assets in another’s name or forming an entity to hold the assets. I didn’t much care for the chicken analogy, though it did work well to illustrate the author’s point. These first parts had great information on dealing with harassing phone calls, and if things escalate to court.

The second half of the book covers judgments and how to handle them. My main lesson from this chapter was to keep confidence when dealing with creditors. Don’t act shamed or subservient. I also learned that wages cannot be garnished if you make below a certain amount monthly. Chapters on mortgages and vehicular loans follow. Student loans came next, which was a pertinent chapter for me. Near two decades later and I’m still dealing with them. All of the chapters have useful checklists and worksheets to help guide you.

The sections on secured, unsecured (credit card), payday loans, and collection agencies followed pretty much the same format. I did learn that medical/health bills are one of the leading causes of debt. Even the simplest medical procedure can be atrociously expensive. The final chapter invites you to embrace being debt-free, and to explore the things that would make you happiest. This chapter rang a bit more philosophical than the others, and it was a pleasantly unexpected change. The end of the book has a whole series of ‘action tools’ to help you with your debt cleanse. Most are letters or check sheets to be filled out and mailed to creditors.

With Debt Cleanse, Newbery has provided a beneficial resource for those in need of debt solutions. I found this book to have a veritable gem mine of valuable information. He uses statistics to good effect and provides citations for them all, for the more intrepid to cross-check. I highly recommend this book to anyone looking to deal with debt, be it large or small. You’ll find no better resource!



Author Jorge P Newbery
Star Count /5
Format Trade
Page Count 416 pages
Publisher Community Books LLC
Publish Date February 11th 2016
ISBN
Bookshop.org Buy this Book
Issue July 2016
Category Self-Help
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