“Dear Steve,

19 year old student, no credit history.

in late April, early May I attempted to sell a macbook computer on ebay, which I was in possession of, it sold, however I didn’t realize the time period to ship, I was in the midst of taking my first finals of my 1st year. The money for the computer was deposited via paypal into my bank account. I didn’t realize that and continued to use my card, thinking because I hadn’t accepeted the payment that the fact that I hadn’t shipped it would, at worst get me kicked off ebay. I’m awful at money and got money from my nanny job deposited into my account every week and my account freezes when I get to 0.

So, I now realize that I need to pay back the $600 dollars and I have that money, however now my debt has been sold to a debt collection agency, but I am having what appears like calls from multiple agency including a foreign sounding man yell awful things, he has also called two different adult friends and I don’t know how he got this information. What do I do to fix this, I do want to fix this, I don’t ever want to be in debt. can you please help?

Caitlin”

The Answer

Dear Caitlin,

I find it hard to believe the foreign sounding guy yelling at you is legit. Since there is some question who might actually owe this debt I would suggest you click here to get a copy of your consolidated credit report, see which company is reporting that debt to the credit bureau and use the contact information from the report to reach out to them.

The consolidated report is important since not all credit reports contain the same information. You’ll need to look at all three to see if they are reporting the same collection company for this debt.

Moving forward it is not the debt that you need to avoid. It’s the not tracking the cash that’s the problem. Focus on doing a better job with that and the debt will be much easier to handle.

Please update me on your progress by posting updates here in the comments section of your question. I’m very interested in how this works out for you.

Big Hug!

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