Rachel was back at work after the two hardest years of her life, picking up overtime and still barely making ends meet. She kept up with her rent, but the credit card balances she had built up while she couldn’t work kept growing. “I saw that there was just no way of getting out of it,” she said.
In January 2024, the Sarasota, Florida, resident enrolled in credit card debt settlement with National Debt Relief. By December 2025, she had graduated from the program, gone back to school, and started a new career as an accountant.
Getting there started with a loss she never saw coming.
Two Years of Loss and Recovery
In 2020, life was going well for Rachel. She worked as a waitress, her credit was strong, and she had been with her husband for 17 years. Near the end of that year, he was killed in a car accident.
The loss left her with PTSD and panic attacks, and she couldn’t function well enough to work. She gave notice at her job and spent the next year trying to cope. To get by, she put food, bills, and everything else she could on her credit cards.
About a year later, almost to the day, Rachel felt ready to go back to work. She took her brother to lunch to talk about getting back out there. On the drive home, a truck spun her out on the highway, and her car ended up in a ditch.
The crash ruined her car and left her too injured to walk. Even as she recovered, she couldn’t stand in one spot for more than about 30 seconds, so waitressing was out of the question. The other driver had no money to pay for the damage, so she got nothing for the accident. It meant another year without income, and another year of putting the basics on credit cards. “More debt, more debt, another year of debt,” she said.
Back at Work but Still Falling Behind
When Rachel was finally back on her feet, the debt was waiting for her. She was making her credit card payments on time, but the interest rates were high, and the balances weren’t shrinking. She worked overtime and still had little left after rent, bills, and card payments. She had even applied for food stamps and was approved for $23 a month.
She was burned out, and she couldn’t see an end to it. Rachel talked with her bank and looked into personal loans, but neither seemed like it would help in the long run. She could keep up with new payments for a while, she thought, but only for so long.
She had doubts about debt relief, too. She worried it wouldn’t work, or that it would leave her in even worse debt. Still, she kept searching online for a solution. She read reviews of National Debt Relief and stories from real people on Reddit, and their experiences encouraged her to call.
Looking back, she wished she had called sooner. “I was so hesitant, and then I was so mad at myself for waiting,” she said.
How Her Credit Card Debt Settlement Program Worked
That’s where National Debt Relief came in. Rachel enrolled $16,291 of credit card debt in its debt settlement program.
The program started with a free call with a Certified Debt Specialist, who listened to her situation and explained her options. “They explained everything, it was so nice… it was so easy,” she said. There was no pressure. Debt settlement was a good fit, so she chose to move forward and enrolled her credit cards.
Rachel made deposits into a dedicated savings account in her name, sized to fit her budget, and no fees were charged until a debt was settled. Her payment came out every two weeks, scheduled for the day after her payday, which made it easy to budget. It was about a third of what she had been paying on her cards each month.
As money built up, National Debt Relief negotiated with her creditors to settle each account for less than she owed. Rachel didn’t have to call each credit card company herself, which mattered because she was “in no position to handle any more stress.” “They did everything for me, and that was huge,” she said.
She saw each settlement offer, and nothing moved forward without her approval. Approving her first one was hard to put into words. “I can’t… I can’t describe it. It was just amazing,” she said.
With her settlements in place, Rachel was approved within minutes for a consolidation loan through Reach Financial to pay them off. The loan came to about a third of what her debt had been, and she graduated from the program.
A New Career and Room to Live
With a lower payment, Rachel had room in her budget for something she couldn’t have afforded before. While she was in the program, she went back to school to study accounting. She paid for it with a Pell Grant and her own money, without taking out student loans.
By late 2025, she was working as an accountant, in what she called “a job that I really love, you know, and that pays better.” The higher pay was helping her pay off her Reach loan.
Her credit recovered, too. Rachel had always been proud of her credit score and had worried whether she would ever have good credit again. By the end of 2025, her score was back to just under 700.
The changes reached beyond her finances. Around the time she enrolled, she got health insurance and started seeing a therapist every week, which she said changed her mindset. She joined a gym and lost about 43 pounds. She opened a savings account and started earning interest instead of paying it.
She could also enjoy life again. She still budgeted carefully for groceries, but she could go out to eat, and she was planning a vacation with her siblings for her 40th birthday.
The holidays felt different, too. For the past few years, Rachel couldn’t afford gifts for her niece and nephews, or even groceries for holiday baking. In 2025, she could buy their Christmas gifts. Her office also skipped its gift exchange to donate to SPARK, which helps women and children, and Rachel took part. “I have all these Amazon packages, you know, where I’ve gotten kids’ toys, and that’s the first time I’ve been able to do something like that, too,” she said.
Back Out There
Rachel hoped her story would reach people where she had been. She had waited, unsure debt relief could work, and regretted it. “It’s just crazy to think of where you’ll be a year from the day you make that phone call,” she said. “I would say not to hesitate at all.”
For Rachel, credit card debt settlement was the step that got her back on her feet.
