Super Heroes Fight Debt

The GetOutOfDebt guy is my hero.

He’s not quite as swashbuckling as Batman and Superman.

Not as suave as Elliot Ness, battling crime gangs.

But he’s fighting for a better world, nonetheless.

He fights Debt, a blight on too many in our squeeze-the-middle class, consumer society.

Steve Rhode  sings my song.

He knows all the words to the ballad about the importance of freeing your financial present from your overcommitted past.

He’s filed bankruptcy himself, and came out the better financially for it.    (He’s apparently tougher than Dave Ramsey who tells us he was scarred by filing bankruptcy.)

He’s not a lawyer and has no self interest in promoting bankruptcy, but promote it he does.

The forces of evil

Why am I telling you this?

Because, it seems the forces on the other side of the fight against debt have tried to silence Steve.

Steve describes his mission this way:

I spend almost every single day educating people why bankruptcy should be a leading debt relief consideration. The credit counselors and debt settlement companies don’t like that. And they play dirty.

Debt settlement companies sued him for telling the public how to get out of  contracts with the debt settlement scammers (and lost).

The target of one of his exposes of a debt relief organization got his YouTube account terminated.

Then, he was mysteriously accused of spamming Google+ and his account was terminated.

The truth apparently hurts those industries trying to make a buck off those mired in debt.

The forces of indifference

Standing between Steve, who argues that providing for retirement is the most compelling reason to get out of debt, and those who want to profit from those in debt, is the financial advisor who participated as the expert in the LATime’s Money Make Over series featured in my Sunday paper last week.

This “expert” opined that a 65 year old woman, assisting a 91 year old mother and a disabled sister, should pay off her credit card debts, and stop being everyone’s go-to person in a crisis.

OK so far.

Only her hours at work had been halved, there was no equity in her home, and the credit card debt totaled $35,000.

He never mentioned considering bankruptcy.  He did say she’d have to work another 10 years to realize her retirement dreams.

I was appalled.  And said so on my blog.

This woman’s situation screamed at me as being appropriate for bankruptcy.  Maybe further inquiry would find a reason why not.

But until she gets that analysis, she’s stuck with the expert telling her to pay credit card interest rates, on half her salary, while hoping that she stays healthy, employed and no crisis befalls those who depend on her.

This expert was apparently too nice, or too ignorant, or too beholden to the financial world to utter the word: bankruptcy.

Knowing Steve’s story, I’m wondering if the financial planners will be out to get me too.

Remember another American hero, Ben Franklin:

“Think what you do when you run in debt; you give to another power over your liberty.”

Image of song lyrics courtesy of Andy Chrisman.

Image of Franklin courtesy of Wikimedia.

Article originally published here on bankruptcylawnetwork.com