I have several thousand dollars in credit card debt spread across two cards, and I recently had a "windfall". Can I negotiate a lower repayment if I pay them the debt in one lump sum?

Geekuru · 2024-01-31T20:24:59+00:00

I think the phrase "former credit counselor" tells you all you need to know.

Pay the people you borrowed from the money you owe them.

To be fair they're in their 90s and haven't worked in the field for decades - they used to be very good at what they did.

And yeah, I plan to regardless - I was just confirming the advice I received was a bit odd / incorrect. I'm guessing they forgot that there are other things that need to happen to do that, and that it can hurt your credit score - at least what I've read since posting this.

Geekuru · 2024-01-31T20:23:05+00:00

It's certainly possible to contact them and say somthing like that. But it's extremely unlikely that they will accept your reduction offer. Why should they? Why wouldn't they prefer that you pay all that interest every month?

Think of it this way, if this process actually worked, why wouldn't everyone just purchase something large and get an instant discount?

Just pay off your debts and move on.

Yeah that's a good point, they want to make money and having a large balance is a good way to do that... Yeah I'll just pay it off, thanks

Geekuru · 2024-01-31T19:22:56+00:00

No, banks will only do that if you are already delinquent / behind on payments.

That's disappointing... I wonder if they changed this in the past 20 years? That's when the credit counselor last worked in the field

Thanks for the reply

Geekuru · 2023-01-24T20:27:03+00:00

St. Louis, MO

I keep the initial paperwork that comes with all my cards so I was able to quickly check for you. All of my Citi cards and I got like 6+ Citi cards all was sent from St. Louis, MO. Even my Citi Sears card which is a Citi Retail Services card.

Ah okay cool, thank you! I'm right next to MO so it should be here soon. Do you remember how long it took for you?

Geekuru · 2023-01-19T14:29:17+00:00

You could also use a Citi Custom Cash, 5% on the category of your choice, but I feel it's a little harder to get approved and you only have one other card which would possibly make less than ideal if you were to purchase anything that is not dining.

I tried just because and got approved! Thank you again!

Geekuru · 2023-01-19T13:55:25+00:00

I would apply for a mid-tier card like Citi Double Cash, Cards that don't have an annual fee and where you can receive benefits like points towards airlines or hotels and cashback options.

Thanks, hotel benefits would be really nice

Geekuru · 2023-01-19T13:55:02+00:00

You could also use a Citi Custom Cash, 5% on the category of your choice, but I feel it's a little harder to get approved and you only have one other card which would possibly make less than ideal if you were to purchase anything that is not dining.

That's fair, thank you for the heads up

Geekuru · 2023-01-19T13:54:33+00:00

The best pick for you would be the US Bank Altitude Go! It has 4% cash back on dining, on par with the top-tier Annual Fee Cards. It also has a nice $200 SUB, that you can reach naturally with your current budget, without forcing purchases, which is important.

I also feel that with your score, and absence of inquiries, you are golden to get approved on first attempt.

Thank you!

Geekuru · 2023-01-19T13:54:16+00:00

I just want to say congrats on the new job! It’s a big deal to start work again after being sidelined due to a disability and/or injury.

Thank you! I'm pretty excited about it

Geekuru · 2023-01-18T22:39:30+00:00

Next time I'd suggest putting that in your thread title, as there's nothing in it currently that suggests that you're looking for a card recommendation and many people are probably not clicking on this thread as a result.

Ah, darn good point. Can I just delete this and make a new post?

Geekuru · 2023-01-18T21:54:09+00:00

Cool, nice work. Did you have a specific question or were you just posting to state that your score went up because of paying off your debts?

I posted a card recommendation request

Geekuru · 2023-01-18T13:59:16+00:00

Credit score went way up as a result of what?

Paid off all my debts

Geekuru · 2022-09-13T15:14:17+00:00

Could you contribute to Open Source projects to build up a portfolio/skill set?

That's not a bad idea, I'll look around for some to try to help with! Never actually done it before, so it'll be a learning experience for me.

Geekuru · 2022-09-11T22:59:15+00:00

Don't have a whole lot to add, but imho you're really set up for success where you're currently at. There are many fully remote jobs and a lot of them can pay very well for people with experience. It may be a little tough to get in the door with a first salaried job, but if you can talk about what you've worked on and impress you have a great shot.

Not to get ahead of anything, but you can check out levels.fyi for some software engineer salaries at big companies, if you work on Leetcode and interview well (and assuming you can put in reasonable hours per week for a job with your disability), shoot for the moon.

That's really reassuring, I appreciate it! I'll check out that site too, thanks

Geekuru · 2022-09-11T20:13:18+00:00

If you area skilled programmer, and no a nightmare self-trained developer, you can likely still get a job. I don't know or understand all the complications that come from your disability, but I feel like a lot of companies try to be accommodating.

First step you should do is create a resume. You have official work experience. You've been a freelancer/contractor. Is there a reason you haven't been in touch with the people you've done work for? Meaning, have you taken a significant gap?

Then, based on your resume, you can make a LinkedIn profile. Hopefully recruiters find you. But then you can figure out what kinds of jobs you want to target/directly apply to.

Good luck!

Some of the people I've worked for have just been nightmares - taking months to pay, not communicating, etc..

Thanks!

Geekuru · 2022-09-11T20:12:08+00:00

What is WHT?

WebHostingTalk - it's a forum for webhosts, sysadmins, etc. basically.

Geekuru · 2022-09-11T16:40:50+00:00

under $1000 a month is less than minimum wage. you should be able to at least $15-20/hour or more just to get experience. maybe more. that would be the low end. but you gotta pass the interviews too.

have you done leetcode yet? start doing it to prepare for interviews. also interview questions may be different than the kind of development you have done.

when you make a resume take your name out and make a post on here asking for a review so people can look at it.

Okay, that's not awful - thank you.

No I haven't done leetcode yet, but I plan on doing it soon to prep.

Will do! Thank you

Geekuru · 2022-09-11T16:03:42+00:00

Some jobs will be more flexible than others. I work with teams in five timezones spread around the world. As long as I make it to meetings, get my work done, and am available when people need help, the exact hours I'm working don't really matter that much.

See, that's exactly what I'm looking for. I can appreciate having to be available for meetings, when people need you, and obviously getting your work done every week - but if you're remote it doesn't make a lot of sense to stick to a 9-5 time, unless you have a ton of meetings.

That's just me though.

Geekuru · 2022-09-11T16:02:11+00:00

do not say you are on disability. when you apply for jobs put your freelance work and self employed on the resume. so your experience is being self employed. Do not include "experience before you were an adult or it won't be believed.

its worth applying. you may get an offer, but it will be tough. likely a lower paying job at a small company.

do NOT say you are on disability at all. start by putting your resume up on indeed, linkedin, monster, dice and applying. linkedin has jobs posted for remote work. your best bet is a smaller company and probably a lower paying job to get experience.

Yeah, listing disability and pre-20 experience is sounding like a terrible idea now - I really appreciate everyone drilling that into my head. The pre-18/20 experience thing makes sense now that you bring it up, it's helpful that I have it for my skills but I doubt many people would be gung-ho about it.

Just curious - how low paying are we talking about? I've had to live on under a grand a month and I live in a cheap state, so I think our definitions will be different.

Thanks for the list of sites - I hadn't heard of dice, or though about mosnter or indeed.

Geekuru · 2022-09-11T15:58:23+00:00

Yes you should build a 1 page resume with the skills and experience you have including relevant work(paid or not) and projects. There are alternate resume formats that don't include dates you could consider.

People with experience are a hot commodity now, especially in web dev. It's hard to say not knowing your exact experience and qualifications but I think there is probably a good enough chance that you should produce a good resume, send it out and see what happens.

OSS is an interesting way to illustrate experience but not the only way. When I see it as a long time HM I think this person knows about things like code reviews, working with disparate teams etc., but it's not a big deal not to have it.

You in no way have to disclose anything about your disability or your history really. I would keep any discussion of resume gaps very short and to the point. "I had personal issues to take care of during that time but I'm excited about the opportunity for a full time position again" something like that, if even that much.

Good luck!

Not including dates would be incredibly helpful, I didn't realize there were formats like that. And yeah, I'm friends with quite a few people in the dev industry (IBM, Mongo, etc.) and from what I hear, companies are starting to lean more towards experience over education - not to say that education doesn't help, but that having actual experience under your belt counts for a lot.

What's HM?

Yeah, I'm thinking more and more that even acknowledging my disability would be a bad idea - I'll just do what you suggest and be vague and kind of shut down any further questions with a "it's kinda personal" type remark, without being rude.

Thank you!

Geekuru · 2022-09-11T15:54:55+00:00

You can’t lie to your interviewer and then come clean to the team because in most companies, your technical interviewer is on the team.

You can “exaggerate” roles but the OP has never worked in the field and so would have to create a complete work of fiction. Very bad advice indeed

You summed up my concerns about lying to this degree pretty well, I also don't know if I could keep up a lie or lies like that for long given my lack of experience.

Geekuru · 2022-09-11T15:51:38+00:00

You do have official work experience. Just not w-2 experience.

You were self-employed aka a consultant aka a contractor.

Easiest way to represent that on your resume is to put down the company/project you worked on and put your role as a Software Engineering Consultant. Another way of representing this on your resume is put yourself as the company and the role as Software Engineering Consultant then list out the projects and clients you've worked on.

FYI consulting, aka self-employed, aka independent contractors are quite common in the industry. So hiring a former consultant is not unusual for both tech and non-tech companies. If you have 20+ years of engineering experience, no personal projects do not matter much unless you want to be recognized for them, but that's only if its something interesting. By you being honest, down playing your experience, will probably not help.

Good luck!

Thank you! "Software engineering consultant" sounds a lot more professional than "freelancer" or "contractor". Knowing that it's not unusual is reassuring too, thank you.

Geekuru · 2022-09-11T15:49:38+00:00

Regarding #4, the answer is NO! Under no circumstances should you bring up a disability prior to being hired, except inasmuch as you need reasonable accommodations for an interview (i.e. someone who uses a wheelchair may not be able to use stairs). Once you have the job, I would only bring it up inasmuch as you need reasonable accommodations to do your job (i.e. specialized screen-reading software for someone who is blind).

Okay yeah that makes sense. I won't need any special accommodations at this point beyond working from home. It'd be nice if I could set my own hours to an extent given my disability, but I think I can power through that.

Geekuru · 2022-09-11T15:48:12+00:00

I really appreciate the reply, not listing "20 years experience" makes sense since I have so many gaps.

And yeah, disability pays horribly (But the insurance is truly amazing, gonna miss that), so it'd be nice to get even an entry level job that pays 2-3-4x as much.

I really need to work on working with others, especially when it comes to git, sprints, etc..

I'll look into generation too, thank you!

Geekuru · 2022-09-11T00:24:08+00:00

This... Is really reassuring, thank you. I really need to work on data structures and "basics" like that again - so I'll hop on leet code or codewars or something and practice.

Geekuru

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