In July 2001, I was in a hopeless situation. I had over over 45,000 dollars in credit card and other unsecured debt and I was making about 1200 dollars a month. In fact I had taken out about 3,000 dollars in check cashing "pay day loans" in a futile attempt to stay caught up with my bills (there is supposed to be a national service which reports abuses of these loans and prevents one from taking so many at the same time; however, I was still able to get loan after loan). It became obvious that I was hopelessly sunk....