How can I deal with my credit card debt?

I am about 17,000 in debt, much of that is fees and finance charges from the companies. I don't know what to do. I am only 22. I feel like I'm in way over my head and this is taking over my whole life. I don't care about having bad credit, but I would like to be able to buy a house someday. This just sucks completely. I would like to consolidate, but my credit score is 492, really, really bad. So I can't get any new loans. I don't know what to do.

For buying a house Credit History is much more important than credit score. Often, the lack of credit history is equated with bad credit. You should be aware that lenders will go through your credit report once you apply for loan for buying a house. Therefore you should polish your credit report. Anyway, in order to establish a good credit history and at the same time risen your credit score in a short time do following things:

1) Close all of your credit cards but one. It reflects in your credit report and it is a very good sign. For instance say that you have 5 credit cards with $1000 credit limit for each. Therefore you are responsible for $5000 of possible debt. But when you close 4 of them, now you are only responsible for $1000 of debt which lowers the level of risk of lending money to you.

2) If you have any loan, like car loan or any balance on your credit cards, try to pay more than your monthly payment for 6 months or something. I mean say your monthly due on your car loan is $150, try to pay $250 each month. Lenders can see these trends in your credit report and they see that you鈥檙e a responsible borrower.
If you don鈥檛 have such loans, I suggest getting a $3000-$4000 loan and paying it off in full in 5-6 months. You might pay $200-$300 of interest but you will save thousands of dollars in your home mortgage and interest rates.

I hear ya man, you are not the only one, when I was 22 I was about 50,000 dollars in debt. At the time I was making enough money to cover all of my payments, but I started to get over my head and bills started to pile up and my credit is starting to get bad because I can't pay. What I did is I called careone credit conselor service, what they did is they set up an account that allows me to make one easy payment to them then they mail out the payments to the numerous creditors for me. They also negogiate with your creditors to lower your interest rates. If been enrolled in the program for about a year and its going good, Im almost out. Check it out at 1-800-259-7684. www.careone.com
It does not matter what kind of credit score you have to get in this program because its not another loan its a way out of debt. Best of luck.

Honestly the best thing to do is talk to a Non-Profit credit counsling agency. They can work with the companies and have you pay 1 payment a month. It will take time but it will turn your credit around. You do not want to try to take out a loan. You can't borrow more money to get out of debt.

If that is not an option your only other choice is to declare bankrutpcy, but if you do go this route do it ASAP as it will stay on your report for 10 years so the sooner you do it the sooner it will be off. If you just decide to not pay the debt this only prolongs everything and make things worse. At least you recongnize that you have a problem and want to take care of it.

visit a credit counselor and discuss

When you gets into a debt trap it becomes difficult to get out of it. Taking more loans to repay the debts leads to more stress and financial crisis. Finally, there is no option but to adopt debt consolidation, which leads to a new llease of life. Many people receive abusive calls from debt collectors and are stressed. Hence opting for debt consolidation is the number one solution and helps to overcome abusive calls and be free from mental stress.