A film screenwriter who, after a round of mishaps and bad luck, had amassed a staggering $220,000 in credit debt was spending his days sparring with debt collectors, and doing all he could to keep bankruptcy at bay.

That was until an attorney steered him toward a path he never thought he'd travel: Debt settlement––essentially negotiating his debt directly with lenders.

"The journey took me about a year and a half," Kenny Golde writes in his book, "The Do-It-Yourself Bailout."  Now "I have reduced my debt … to zero.  I have done this legally, at a fraction of the cost of the debt itself, and I saved just under $150,000."

(READ the story from Business Insider)