Dazed and in debt in the credit card maze

"I owe about $12,000 in unsecured debt, and my payments just keep going up," a troubled citizen signing himself T.P. recently informed a personal-finance columnist. He always paid more than the minimum amount due on his credit card bill, but "still the balance never goes down," T.P. wrote. "Is there any way to get the interest rate down?"

The interest rate that so oppressed T.P.? A towering 29.99 percent. At this rate, the columnist said, if T.P. continued to pay little more than the monthly minimum, it could take him more than 30 years to pay off his balance — even if he never went shopping again.

Trying to fight off a collection agency while paying little or nothing on his credit card debt, another desperate borrower, R.Z., appealed to this same columnist. How could he prevent interest charges and late fees from mounting? He couldn't, replied the columnist, as long as he legally owed the money.

Consumers like T.P. and R.Z. find themselves caught in the complexities of today's bankruptcy laws. And their predicament is increasingly common.

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