Debt Debt Debt.

That’s not horrible. I think your #1 focus should be “how can I make $10-30k of additional income” and pay that mess off in 5-8 years.

Both of you working?

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sure, but you in the end you pay way more than what you owe. That's how that works. But again, looks you know that.

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doing that now.

that 63K will be 200K if sticking with credit payments at minimums.

Can you refinance your house, roll it in and go back to a 30 years term?

Will reduce your monthly payments but be more over time, most likely.

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She needs to be working too

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Stay at home mom? This isn’t an excuse anymore and even stay at home spouses should be able to make $10-25k/yr with something on the side, especially with the motivation to get out of debt.

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We were plugging along and then our AC died. Had to get another one. Life will continue to happen.

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Are you able to throw 2,000 per month at the debt?
If not, What percentage of your income goes to housing? What kind of vehicles are you driving?

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Can you go to one vehicle, sell the house. Rent for a bit. Elinsting home maintanence and a vehicle and associated costs could save you more than 12k a year.

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If they are making more money than ever then this advice is the only advice.

You’re an ER nurse, per your profile. Work 20 extra hours a week either at the primary job or a secondary job.

Consider a traveling nurse job in rural Texas within a reasonable distance from your family.

In addition to rice and beans, scorched earth, etc.

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What they SAY is they can reduce or payments from $1700 a month to 900 or 1100 a month depending on terms of 42 or 52 months. No prepayment penalty.

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I think it’s important to consider that there are 3 parties (creditors; you; consildation company) who are all trying to maximize their gains and minimize their risk and losses. And that’s one more party that will want a piece of the pie, that will passing off those costs to the other parties.

In addition, between the two original parties, I’m sure that the creditors have a more systematic and objective plan and basis for it than a person struggling with debt, and they probably have a less emotional link to the agreement as it’s merely a business transaction, likely based on risk models and risk-adjusted returns. So it seems to me that it’s going to be a lot harder negotiate something that would lower their returns, unless there are specific risk reductions that make it more feasible among other factors like nearing the end of the payment schedule where interest payments are at the lowest, or wanting the immediate capital to lend as rates rise.

But even if they were to negotiate something to the creditors’ benefits, I doubt the benefits of the negotiations would result in much of impact on your financial costs since they are trying to benefit themselves first and foremostt.
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But let’s assume they did lower your costs a bit, at least in regards to the debt itself. And all of the debt is consolidated into one single debt, and hopefully the negotiations limited the overall debt owned, but I doubt it’s a substantial amount in reality and it would need the creditors to have detrimened that the terms of the negotiations justified some sacrifice on returns, for some other purpose (less risk; tax implications; interest income decrease). I just don’t see how the creditors would negotiate something that doesn’t provide some specific benefit to the creditors and that this agreement would also benefit you.

Now maybe you would have some minor benefits from them lowering some aspects of the debt. However, it seeens that most of the debt would still be present, regardless of who is debt holder. So I don’t see how they saves you much. In addition, the negotiations themselves have costs, unless the negotiation works for free, that would add to your financial obligations.

And if they are taking on the majority of your debt, and did all of work to get there, then are also assuming the risk attached to that debt, and if they lower rates to benefit you, then they are taking in even more risk since the potential gains are lower with less interest income.

And since they not only lowering your payments, they are allowing for you to be able to pay extra, especially with that buffer zone between the original payment and the new one.

And while I would normally find prepayment penalties to be scam, prepayments do lower the debt holder’s potentially gains as it lowered the total interest paid, which is a debt holder’s major source of income, which a prepayment penalty would either mitigate some of the losses from the reduction in interest or discourage others from prepayment.

So unless they are running it more like a Charitable business, I dont see anyway that anyone who is good at this would put in all that work in the front end, take on the risk of the debt, take in more risk and lower returns by lowering your rate, and it would all allow you to pay off the debt faster with more payments and/or larger payments, adding more risk on top of risk.

So that seems like a lot of work and risk, resulting in a lower ROI than the original creditors with much more work than they would have out in.

There just has to be a catch because adding a middleman to do all the work requiring some very specific and useful skills that aren’t cheap, and then that middleman takes in additional credit risks and allows the prepayment risk in too if it all, I just don’t see how that would be a successful business model. Unless they have other means to obtain the benefits and minimize the risk.

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The catch is normally charge offs and long term financing.

customers manage to both mess up their credit AND pay significantly more in interest than if they simply paid off the debt.

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This. A 3rd party debt company simply comes in to "help" you by making money. They are for lazy people that can't find the lowest interest rates and negotiate on their own. The only people they are actually good for is someone with very high interest rates. You need to simply shop around and see if you can get some personal lines of credit, HELOC, etc. that are as low as you can get on your own.

$60k is not a small amount of debt, but there's absolutely no reason to not have a 4 year 48month plan. Anyone can make an extra $15k a year by hustling. But furthermore, there's no reason you can't pay $5-10k off a year simply by cutting your costs more then you only have to earn an extra $5-10k hustling. Deliver pizza's, uber, work extra shifts, mow laws, etc.

What is the debt in? If you bought tangible items you need to sell them. If you are living in too big of a house or too nice of a neighborhood, sell it and move.

As said, there's no easy way out. There's no reason it should take longer than 4 years. If you are taking longer than 4 years then you aren't working hard enough by changing your spending habits and working extra.

ETA: OP if you are a nurse wtf. That's one of the easiest careers to pick up a side job or extra shifts. $63k as a nurse should be paid off in 36 months easily by hustling, or you simply are not coming close to trying.