What are bank sponsored credit card hardship payment plans? Banks reach out through the phone and with mailers in an effort to get accounts that have fallen behind back on track. Large credit card banks are willing to work directly with you shortly after you miss a payment.
Hardship payment programs are a bank’s loss mitigation effort for credit card debts. The larger lenders have well established and effective strategies that are often fair and measured to your ability to pay. The problem is… they only offer them to you when you fall behind.
I cover the many issues with missing payments, and hardship repayment plans in general, in more detail below. You will want to be aware of potential drawbacks before agreeing to the plan with your lender.
First I want to dig in to how and why banks offer to reduce your monthly payments, and that you do not have to wait for an offer to come to you, but can be more proactive in asking your credit card bank for help.
Talk to Your Bank About a Hardship Plan
The first step is to talk to your creditors about your situation. You may have already tried talking to your credit card banks about lowering your payment in the past. The hardship you explained to the customer service rep probably did not seem to matter. That is primarily because the person you are speaking with is generally not empowered to make any changes to your payments, even if they wanted to, if your payments on the account are current.
Your bank that was unwilling to work out lower and more affordable monthly payments with you when you were current is often willing to work with you if you have fallen behind.
If you’ve missed credit card payments, you already know that banks start reaching out to you with phone calls, emails, and letters right away. Banks know that constant “reminders” that you are late with a payment increases their potential to get your credit card back on track with some type of payment. Many of the larger credit card issuers will reach out to you and offer lower monthly payments within days of missing a payment, while some banks won’t offer a lower payment option until you are a few weeks to a month or more late.
We have previously discussed how lower monthly credit card payments are available through consumer credit counseling services and companies offering debt management plans. More banks began making direct offers to account holders when payments were missed after the economy began dipping into recession. The payment reduction a bank may offer directly to you comes from their willingness to reduce your interest rate temporarily, or over the life of the repayment plan.
You Do Not Need to Send a Hardship Letter
Drafting and sending a hardship letter to your credit card bank is typically unnecessary. Hardship letters are something more consistent with what you would include when you are looking at a home mortgage modification, a short sale, or qualifying for some type of benefit or adjustment on your home loan. Qualifying for a hardship program with credit card debt is literally just a matter of a phone call, and qualifying in your credit card banks system for the payment reduction.
If your bank representative asks you to send in something in writing that outlines your hardship, it is typically not a problem to send them what you would convey over the phone, but detailed in a letter or email.
The vast majority of us will be able to answer one of our credit card lenders frequent calls, or place a call ourselves, in order to discuss lower monthly payment options.
How Temporary Credit Card Payment Plans Work
Hardship repayment plans will be different from one bank to the next. How late your payments are, how much you owe, your household expenses, all will contribute to what type of lower payment the bank will offer you in one of their internal hardship plans.
Bank-sponsored lower monthly hardship repayment plans are accomplished by reducing your credit card interest rates.
Some hardship payment options have a temporary timeline. The temporary plans will often last as little as 3 months and go as long as 12 months. Your payment is reduced because the creditor is willing to lower your interest rate for several months while on the the temporary hardship plan. Interest rates may be as low as zero percent and typically will not exceed ten percent.
Your bank will often waive or eliminate any fees and penalties that were charged to your account when you are repaying through one of their hardship plans, but only after you make several payments on time.
Some, but not all banks, will allow the account to stay open when you are on a temporary hardship repayment plan. This would mean you could resume using the card when the temporary plan is over and you successfully made all of the payments.
The temporary reduced payment plans are useful to someone who is only experiencing a hardship that is not expected to continue for any significant period of time.
How Long Term Hardship Payment Plans Work
Longer term hardship repayment plans offered by credit card lenders did not become popularized until the economy started to take a dive several years ago. Those banks offering long term plans, at the time of this writing, will close your account, freeze your interest rate at between zero and 10%, and amortize your monthly payment using your current balance. Your new lower monthly payment will be the same every month over a 60 month time period (federal regulations typically prevent these plans from exceeding 5 years).
Some banks offered long term plans during the worst of the recession, but now only offer temporary plans.
These “life of the balance” repayment programs closely resemble debt management plans available through a nonprofit counseling agency. Some of the differences between using a credit counseling service, and setting up the hardship plans yourself will be:
- How many creditors you will have to contact in order to achieve the same result.
- You may not be able to get the same results a counseling agency would get for you.
- The credit counselor will only have to get your account details and your income and expense information from you once.
If you have many credit cards, and some of them do not offer the longer term hardship plans, you are often better off getting the lower monthly payments through a credit counseling service, rather than making all of the efforts on your own. And because talking to a certified counselor to get an exact quote of what your credit card payment will get lowered to is free, and you DO NOT have to be late with payments, I recommend you speak to one at 800-939-8357, ext 1.
Getting Approved For a Repayment Plan
Approval for reducing your monthly payments is not automatic just because you are late with payments. You can be turned down, and for predictable reasons. Your bank is going to want to discuss your ability to make any lower payments, and this will typically involve answering a series of qualifying questions. The information you will be asked for will focus on your monthly income and household bills.
Be ready to answer questions about what you pay for rent or a mortgage, how much you pay for phone and cable, utilities, groceries etc. How you answer these budget questions will impact what plan you qualify for, or if a reduced payment plan will be available at all. If your monthly cash flow shows money is too tight after you pay typical living expenses, you obviously cannot reasonably commit to any plan, no matter how good the terms.
Your bank, who you assume wants nothing more than to collect on what you owe, may actually tell you that they don’t want your money!
If your income and expense exercise shows you have too much money after your regular bills are paid, the lower payment plan your bank offers may not be as good, or may not be made available to you at all. Mainly due to the fact that you do not appear to them to be in a hardship situation using their preset criteria.
There are many situations I see where your bank may not offer you a hardship plan, but would allow your account to be enrolled in a credit counseling plan, which accomplishes the same long term payment reduction.
Some banks that offer the 5 year long hardship repayment plans may require that you recommit to the plan every year.
Additional Benefits to These Plans
Depending on how many months you have missed payments, your creditor may agree to “re-age” the account after 3 or more timely payments on the plan. This means they will bring your account current in their reporting to the credit bureaus. This takes the sting off of the 30, 60, 90 and longer late pays that may already be on your credit report, and prevents them from affecting your credit in perpetuity. There are limitations to the re-aging benefit. Once your account is 3 months late, some banks don’t re-age.
If your account is not charged off (typically 6 months late), you can still get lower monthly payments from banks offering them.
As a general rule, whether you work through a credit counseling service, or work directly with your bank(s) to set up a hardship payment plan, it is best to do so before you reach 90 days of consecutive nonpayment.
Warnings About Credit Card Reduction Plans
I already mentioned how these payment reduction plans are generally not available to you until you miss a payment (depending on the credit card lender). That can have credit reporting impacts if you allow an account to go more than 30 days late. But here are some warnings to consider before you try to get set up with a reduced payment, or call in to see if you qualify.
- If you make calls to your bank asking about a payment reduction plan, you’re basically telegraphing to them that you are at risk of missing payments. This may result in the bank lowering your credit limit to what you currently owe, or possibly closing the account. If you still have the means to make your normal monthly payments, calling your creditors to discuss your hardship, or any available lower monthly payment options, is not recommended. The hardship repayment strategy should be reserved for the banks and accounts you are already late with, or know that you soon will be.
- Some of the smaller banks, credit unions, department store cards, and fuel station credit cards, do not offer hardship payment plans to you directly, but do generally offer the lower monthly payments to you if you go through a credit counseling service.
- In nearly all instances of banks offering credit card hardship payment plans, whether temporary or long-term, they will want the payments to be pulled through electronic access to your bank account on the same day of the month. You must be prepared for those payments being pulled (always leave yourself a balance cushion). If the money is not in the account, causing the payment to fail, you may not get another chance at it, and your payments can revert to the higher interest rates.
The biggest concern you should have with starting a hardship repayment plan directly with your creditors is the same drawback to getting lower monthly payments with a credit counseling service – the inflexibility. You must make your monthly payment on time, all the time. If you miss a monthly payment on either of these plans, it often results in losing the lower payment benefits, and the lower interest rates. The worst part of falling off of a payment plan will be the lost time and money that gets wasted on a strategy that did not relieve your debt problem.
Credit Card Hardship Payments are Not Flexible
I mentioned that any credit card payment plan you agree to will require you to never be late in order to keep the benefits. It is rare to get your bank to forgive any payment failure and keep your payment reduced. But you can often be more flexible with how you use hardship payment programs with your different credit cards. You can be deliberate with your planning from the outset.
A good example of this would be enrolling one or more of your higher balance, or higher interest cards, into a hardship plan while maintaining normal payments to others. Due to passage of the CARD Act, creditors can no longer arbitrarily raise your interest rates based on your payment performance with other creditors. They can only raise your rates if you miss payments on your account with them directly (and after 60 days). But be careful with this, as it would not prevent them from lowering credit limits if, during a periodic review, they see that you are behind in payments to other creditors.
Conclusion
Creditors often will not set you up in lower payment plans, or offer any form of payment concession, more than once over a set period, or perhaps only once… ever (though you can often negotiate and settle the debt for less after dropping the hardship payments).
A temporary credit card hardship plan today may keep the bill collector at bay – but be sure you have a real plan for your debt and not just some one time band-aid.
You may have multiple credit card accounts that you are trying to juggle. You can use a creative and flexible approach to managing your bills through selectively enrolling only some accounts in creditor-sponsored hardship plans. Alternatively, combining lower monthly repayment plans with budgeting and money-saving strategies can also work as a debt solution for the right person. There are also instances where I have worked with people to settle some credit card debts, and then do a hardship payment plan on others accounts.
Readers are welcome to schedule a one on one phone consult with me to talk through how a hardship plan could work for them. You can also post anonymously in the comments below for my direct feedback.
Hi Michael – going through a horrendous divorce and financial abuse from my husband. I had zero debt and excellent credit before this but could only pay for lawyers on credit cards. I am the out spouse – stay at home mom for high support kids (mental illness, disability) for 30 years while he ran his business, now husband has not paid support payments in 6 months (contempt of court date pending). I am paying minimums on cards, but it is impossible now, I am looking at buying food or paying minimums on credit cards because things are that bad. I won’t be able to pay rent next month. Is it worth calling for forbearance (Chase Sapphire, Chase Ink, Amex Business Blue Plus)? What happens in that instance? Can I still use the card if I need to – as long as I pay? The Chase Sapphire and Chase Ink minimums are killing me and I need relief. And the American Express Blue Business Plus will be come August when the interest kicks in. I think I can handle the Amex gold personal card. Keep paying the minimum and more when I can. Not sure what to do about the Apple Mastercard. I don’t want my credit score to go down, which is 723 today
Current personal cards:
Chase Sapphire. Balance $8,854 Min payment $368
American Express Gold. Balance $4,359 Min payment $150
Apple Mastercard. Balance $5,407 Min payment $120
Capitol One. I haven’t used yet but will probably need to use for food this week. Available credit $1,000. 0% APR until June 2024.
Current Business Cards (I have an LLC, but it doesn’t produce income last few years):
Chase Ink. Balance $13,912 Min payment $430
American Express Blue Business Plus. Balance $12,175 Min payment $122 *0%APR until August 2024 then 26.24%
American Express Blue Business Cash. Available credit $2,000. I haven’t used, but will probably have to use for some bill this week. 0% APR until 2025 then 30.24%.
I would suggest you schedule a call with me to go over your situation and options in more detail. You can schedule the call here: https://calendly.com/debtbytes/15min
HI Michael, very helpful article thank you! I have a hardship plan with Citi that I’ve been paying on a few years for 4 cards with them totaling $18K. The card with the highest balance is now at $9K and payment is $560/month. I’m 60 days behind and wondering if I have any leverage to re-negotiate that down either myself or through Cambridge. Have you seen Citi budge on interest rate for those behind in their hardship payment plans? Also I have nearly $30k with Amex spread over 2 cards and after falling behind they proactively offered me a 48 month hardship plan at 9.9% interest. I’m wondering if you’ve seen Cambridge or other do better than 9.9% with Amex these days? For Citi I considered trying the settlement route but I don’t have 50% of the $18K handy as cash reserves right now but maybe I could try settling the one with $9K at $4500 (spread out in a payment plan) while I keep paying the hardship programs on the 3 lower balance cards with them. You mentioned sometimes you mix and match settling with hardship plans so wondering if Citi plays ball with this. Thank you!
Go ahead and schedule a phone consult with me here.
I can help you evaluate what a hybrid approach to payment plans and debt settlement in this situation will look like.
Hi Michael – I have a Chase Ink Business Card with 32K on it. Ran into problems with business during pandemic and have just been making minimum payments for 3+ years now. Chase closed the account beginning of the year – so I have no access to use the card now, but still making min payments to stay current. Would like to set up hardship plan to lower the monthly payment, but they claim no hardship plan and that I have to deal directly with their “collections department” to set up payment plan. Want to keep the Chase business card from reporting to my personal credit bureau file (which could create issues with my personal cards), Would getting on a hardship plan or payment plan with chase collection result in them reporting to my personal credit report, they have never done that in past because I am current despite the closed account status? Thanks for help
I tend to see the Chase business credit on personal reports after a couple missed payments, so there is a window to try to prevent that.
Thanks for reply michael – guess what I’m trying to figure out is – even assuming I stay current and always make min payment – would the act of going on a payment plan/hardship automatically trigger reporting to personal credit report even if I make all payments on time? Thanks again for any further thoughts.
Typically… no. Not unless you have fallen late with payments, and in your particular situation, by more than 30 days.
Hello Michael! I spoke to you a year ago and it was a genuinely life-changing conversation: it was the first time I fully admitted that my financial situation wasn’t sustainable and considered alternatives to slowly drowning in debt. Thank you!! I still have a truckload of credit card debt, but at the rate things were escalating it would otherwise have been a lot worse!
11 months ago I enrolled with a debt management program for much of my debt, but I recently arranged two reduced payment programs directly with creditors at even better terms, and I wanted to pass on the latest.
If you have any thoughts on the debt management program (specifically the 4 creditors at 10%, and if there’s any way I can renegotiate), I’d love to hear them, but I’m not super optimistic –– I just wanted to let you know about the unexpectedly decent terms from Bank of America and TD Bank, and to say thanks!
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LESSONS LEARNED (for others reading this thread in a panic):
My fixation on credit score and relief at ANY reduction in APR both worked against me. I made minimum payments for as long as I could, and only skipped 1-2 payments before enrolling in my debt management plan, which I accepted without comparing terms. Those missed payments were cleared from my report when I enrolled, which was nice, but I would likely have gotten much better terms if I had waited longer –– and my credit score ended up taking a hit later anyway.
That goes to the biggest lessons: If I could go back in time, then when first setting up a debt management program I would have:
1) spoken with more than one nonprofit to compare terms;
2) taken those terms to the banks to see if they would agree to something lower;
3) enrolled ALL of my credit cards in plans, whether through a DMP or with the banks.
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DEBT MANAGEMENT PROGRAM (2-10% over 60 months)
I’m working with Greenpath, a nonprofit based in NYC, to pay off 5 creditors. They negotiated 2% interest for one Chase card (~$8.3k), but the other four cards (~$22.3k, 3 with Citi, 1 other with Chase) were set at ~10% interest rates. I now think this seems high for this sort of program, but it seems unlikely that I can renegotiate the terms (though I’d love to hear otherwise!). I started off paying $335 every 2 weeks; after losing a job, they agreed to lower this to $298 every 2 weeks.
Over the last year I’ve paid ~$6.3k, with ~$24.4k remaining.
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BANK OF AMERICA (6% over 60 months)
For both BoA and TD, I stopped paying, dodged all calls, and even ignored a scary FedEx’d document before getting in touch after several months.
–– Balance: $2,000 @ 21.99%
–– Payments: 5 payments (of $94/month) past due, current due $495
–– Reported income: When asking about hardship programs, I reported ~$15k in annual income; they didn’t ask other questions.
• Offer 1, 55% payoff: $1,100 to be paid in 3 installments over 90 days
• Offer 2, reduced payment program: $39 / month, for 60 months, at 6%
–– no penalty for paying more than the minimum or paying the balance early
Unfortunately I can’t make any large payments while still handling the $600/month for Greenpath, so I went with the second offer.
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TD BANK (0% over 60 months)
–– Balance: $2350 @ 29.74%
–– Payments: 120 days past due, current due $536
–– Reported reasons past due: medical issues, a stretch of unemployment.
–– Reported income & expenses:
They had a full questionnaire with questions related to income, rent, utilities, and other bills, including other credit card payments. They were clear that I needed to show an ability to pay in order to qualify for a hardship program; without full specifics, I reported ~$9500 per year in income above my expenses.
• Offer 1, 12-month to good standing: no significant reductions.
• Offer 2, reduced payment hardship program: $40 per month, for 60 months, at 0% APR
I was very surprised to hear 0%, especially given the threatening letters I’d received saying I needed to pay off the full account balance immediately! I wonder if TD is trying to recover anything they can, given their recent $1.2 billion settlement? Either way, they confirmed that there would be no fees or penalties for paying more than the minimum or paying early.
Thanks for those updates. The possibility of getting creditors to renegotiate the interest rate reduction on an existing debt management plan is something you will want to discuss with the nonprofit agency you are working with.
Every one of the creditors you listed have, at one time or another, approved zero percent repayment plans spread over 60 months. Qualifying for these plans is a moving target based on different criteria, as you saw. There are times where some major credit card banks seemingly will not go to zero percent at all.
I think you did pretty well for yourself!
That settlement deal with Bank of America had lots of room for improvement. If you hit a snag where you then have to consider settling accounts for less than the balance owed, post an update.
Also, please post an update if you get your DMP rates further reduced.
Looking for a way to lower my minimum monthly payment.im going through a hardship.
What is the total of your combined unsecured debts?
Yes I’ve not got a huge amount of debt but I do have a credit one credit card account that never got paid because I had a medical emergency. I owe Credit One Bank I think 1600.00 and they’re trying to garnish my wages and need setup something to pay them back because I can’t pay it all at once right now but I can do a payment plan other than garnishment.
It will be tough to get the collection law firm to agree to a payment plan outside of wage garnishment if they have already started that process.
Call your court and see what the process is to petition the court to show the garnishment creates a hardship. If you are successful with that, you can often get the law firm to agree to a payment plan that works better for you.
Reading through this comment thread is a strange kind of reassuring…
Here goes: I have over $29,000 in credit card debt.
Rough balances / APRs (the Citi rates go up to this in November, when my balance transfer rates expire):
Chase (2 cards): $8k (15%) + $6k (20%)
Citi (3 cards): $7k (20%) + $4.2k (16%) + $4k (13%)
I’m barely making my minimum payments (and obviously not putting a dent in the debt), but I have not yet missed any. My credit score has still suffered because my debt-to-credit ratio is poor, so I’m no longer as worried about maintaining it, and I also don’t plan to buy a car or home or have kids.
Chase repeatedly said they have no options because I haven’t missed any payments. After writing a semi-emotional letter I was given a different number to call, and someone dropped the words “repayment plan.”
The next spokesperson initially repeated that Chase will not renegotiate payments or APR, but when I told him that someone else told me about a repayment plan with a lower rate, he put me on hold, and on his return admitted that they have a “balance liquidation plan,” and that I would need to provide info about my income and expenses when applying. He gave me a head’s up that I would likely be ineligible right now, so I decided to hold off and search around for best practices first—surprisingly, it wasn’t because I haven’t yet missed any payments, but rather because of how recently I’ve used one of the cards.
Any thoughts?
Assume for a moment that both Chase and Citibank put you on hardship repayment payment plans where they charged super low, to no interest. You could basically dived your balance’s at enrollment by 60. Is that monthly payment something you can afford with confidence? If it is than hardships payments are something to explore.
If that lower monthly payment is not something you can commit to with 100 percent confidence, how long would it take you to pull together twelve thousand dollars, while not paying on these credit cards?
Thanks. They only offered me short term with 5/3 so I thought maybe that’s how all banks do it… Short to long. But I’ll shoot as long as possible with HSBC and Capital One.
Hey Michael. Had a question about hardship plans for myself. I enrolled in a 6 month 0% interest rate with 5/3 bank yesterday. What are the chances they extend it to a 5 year if I prove hardship (SSDI) and can still manage to make my payments? Also, similar question for HSBC and Capital One. Any chance they allow me to enroll in short to eventually long term hardship plans with the lowest possible interest rates when I’m on time with my payments currently? Thanks!
It is typically best to enroll in the 5 year hardship plan where they close your account up front, and you then pay off the balance over the 60 months (or less) at a reduced interest rate that whole time. This is because some banks only offer one hardship plan on your account… ever.
Other banks will offer temporary hardship plans, and not roll you into another for a year.
Is you are unsure about your situation improving in the near future I would err on the side of taking the longest payment plan available.
Oops. Sorry for posting in the wrong place last time.
HSBC made me apply for a 1 year hardship plan and I’ll have a result mailed to me in 10-14 days. The guy said as long as I make my payments it’s likely I would be accepted for re-applying after the year.
Capital One wouldn’t even do a short term plan yet because I’ve paid on time. They waived my next payment though and said call back next month and maybe the option will be available.
Some banks hardship plans you are better off talking to them about when you are already late with a payment by a couple days.
Hi Michael. I received notice a month ago that my HSBC hardship account is being sold to another company. I was wondering if you heard any news as to what that company was. I’m wondering if they will renew me in Feb.
I would call them and inquire who is picking up the account.
Somehow they don’t know. I’m told the transfer will occur between October and March and I will find out more information as it becomes available. Oh well!
Thank you for your thorough exploration of hardship plans with credit card companies. Based on what I am reading here, I feel confident about my next move with my credit card payments. Bless you!
What to do when your hit with a worldwide pandemic, such as right now with covid-19, and I lost my job as a teacher.
I can’t talk verbally to anyone in regard to this matter. I have an account with Synchrony bank and I would like to enter into a hardship program to no avail, your help would be greatly appreciated.ail.
You typically have to talk to the bank in order to get the hardship plan yourself. If you would like to have someone else help you do that, I suggest talking to a counselor (still need to converse) by calling 800-939-8357 and hit ext 1. The call is no charge, and you will be able to get a quote of how low they can get Synchrony (and other credit cards) to monthly.
Hardship because of a divorce and death of my ex-wife
Michael,
I own a construction company and recently have had major Back Surgery. Long story short the Titanium Rod Broke in my back causing me to barely be able to move I found a specialist Dr. That operates out of NYU. I have been in severe pain and most of the nights and days I have been laid up in Bed. I had been working to schedule the required surgery. During the month of January My 27 year old son started feeling really sick so I took him in to Patient First where they discovered he was just a day from going into a Diabetic Ketoacidoucous Coma we spent 8 days in ICU were they found his blood sugar has been bad for a. Long time but diabetes was missed in many appointment. We finally felt better because we now knew with the proper medicine he could get better. Saturday February 4th ge had a dr appointment we overslept Saturday morning or so i thought i went in to wake him up and he passed away in his sleep. I am devastated and have be beyond words my Home Depot commercial citibank credit card $20,000 limit i have been devastated and need help if i can get on their Hardship program would help me more than i can say. Is there anyway you can help me? My name is Brian Madrid my cell phone is [edited} can you please call me oi let me know i would be so grateful.
Sincerely
Brian Madrid
I am so sorry for your loss Brian. I will contact you and set up a time for us to go over your finances and see if you can meet the monthly payment on a hardship plan with Home Depot.
Michael,
Thanks for your detailed analysis. It all makes sense – and doesn’t make sense – at same time. … I’m currently paying $1,600 a month on 18 credit cards and another $1,050 on a prosper loan $11,000 left from original $36,000 loan. So, counting prosper I’m paying about $2,700 a month, with about $1,000 per month interest. My total debt, including prosper, is $70,000 and we obviously are making no headway. I would like to pay my debts, and think I could, if I could freeze my accounts and work out reasonable payment plans. My wife and I make about $150,000 a year, but putting 4 kids through private schools and college has dug us a very deep hole. We have talked with national debt relief, and the only thing I don’t like is the idea of not making payments. I can’t deal with hourly calls and harassment. We have considered a refinance in our home, but we don’t have enough equity to pay off the debt, and I know what when you leave a few accounts unsettled. It sounds hopeless, I know. We have both taken 401k loans and used them to fix our house so we can either sell or refinance. It’s taken about $15,000 to get house up to its $111,000 appraisal worth. We have $50,000 left to pay on our mortgage. Any ideas?
Call in for a consult this coming week at 800-939-8357 ext 2. You can also email me at the same address you get this comment notification from (if you are a subscriber). We can a schedule a time on the phone through email.
hi michael, my husband and I hit hard financial times several years ago, but just in the last several months stopped paying our credit card bills. We could no longer afford them. I want to try to settle them. To date, I have not spoken to any of them but am approaching the 180 day mark in March. I have read how you should not accept the banks first offers, but when do you know when to accept? Citibank sent me an offer in the mail to settle with a lump sum or 3 payment plan at 40% of the balance of one of my cards. i never contacted them, they just sent me the letter. I called them and asked them if they would take a lesser amount if I paid it as a lump sum and they said that the 40% was as low as they would go. Should I accept the 40% or keeping trying for less. Also my other creditors who I have not reached out to yet are Bank of America, two Synchrony credit cards, two Chase credit cards, Navy Federal Credit, (Home Depot (also Citibank holder). The total indebtedness is about $70,000. Can you give me any guidance on the different creditors? Thanks for any help.