<prompt> Human: Military ooo I have money now purchases, and a lazy personality towards fixing my debt have resulted in my accumulating more debt over the years.Im about to turn 25 years old, Im making decent money now just got the job about a month ago and I want to start a plan to get debt free.The problem is, even after 2134 google searches about where to start - I dont know where to start.Ive pulled my credit report from annualcreditreport.com - so I know what debts I have, but there are unfortunately, alot.45 missed payments, numerous 90 days .. scary things.Do I contact a credit counselor, and pay them for help? Do I contact an attorney? I have so many financial questions. I still havent filed my tax return for this year, and still havent got my return from last year.Help, please.Assistant: I would do the following:1 file your taxes for this year. This will give you a psychological victory because it is way easier to handle than the other stuff.2 Find out who you owe by asking them to validate the debt. Validating the debt is a formal way of verifying if you truly owe them money. Lets say that you see on your credit report that Bobs Debt Collection is after you. Write a letter to them using this as a template:3 Tax return status for last year. Check it at irs.gov Wheres my refund? link4 Make a budget. There are some spreadsheets you can use at the sidebar. Some people also like mint.com for viewing transactions.Human: 1 - I dont have all my W4s. I was homeless for about 4 months at the beginning of the year, and Im sure they tried mailing it out to me - but the address was a former friends place who has vowed never to speak to me again after I told her I didnt want to deal with her and her druggie ways. She then kicked me out, told me I had zero mail ever come in. I suppose I can just contact my employers directly right?2 - Okay. 3 - Doesnt come up with anything, Ive tried it numerous times. Their online system to find my past filings never works. I was thinking about going to the local IRS office, would they be able to help?4 - Was going to after my first check. But they only offer direct deposit, and I dont have a bank at this time been using PayPal Business Debit Card for all my finances. And my credit is too poor to open a bank account anywhere.  <response>: And my credit is too poor to open a bank account anywhere.Banks will take your money with poor credit, but they wont take your money if you ever bounced a check and didnt resolve it, or owe a bank money - you likely are on a 7 year blacklist.. So, I got some more homework for you to add to your list: visit ChexSystems - one of the more popular blacklists - order your free report, find out if youre on there, then contact the company and make it right.Down the line you should try to get into a credit union vs a big bank if possible. As for you credit reports, you got a lot of work and research ahead of you. I suggest visiting rcredit. Here are some brief things you should know: It is important to know that paying some old bills can damage your credit rating further an item showing as paid will reset the latest activity on the account to now instead of a date 5 years ago that is beyond statute of limitations for instance Know what your statute of limitations is. It is good to know if any of those charged off accounts can get you sued or not. Some states its as little as 3 years. Some are twice that. You dont want to start disputing items, validating stuff for debts that are within SOL that can get you sued for instance. From the above you should be able to learn to triage your reports. Hopefully by this time your taxes are done and youre in with credit union or bank. This will be marathon, not a sprint, but each tiny tiny little step should provide some motivation and breathing room, let this motivation compound and snowball larger and larger giving you more desire to fix things. In the meantime, if anyone attempts to call you about debts, stay off the phone. Just hang up. If you get any letters, you will need to respond to them. Debts get sold and re-sold, and if you respond requesting validation within 30 days of their first initial contact to you, they have to stop collecting and cant report it for a while. Avoiding letters from debt collectors will add more negative items on your reports. If you get a letter from a law office, you likely will be sued soon so you can either settle or save up to hire a consumer attorney to represent you most plaintiffs dismiss the case on debts of 10k or less if defendant has legal representation - they hope for a default judgement when you dont show up and often times dont have proper paperwork to win a judgement against a lawyer You likely have double or triple entries on your reports. Know that the original creditor will have an account for you and youll likely see another entry for a collection agency, which is allowed. When you start seeing multiple debt collection companies reporting the same debt, only one can have it, so right there you know you for sure can strike something from the reports.Read, read, read, read, and ask in one of the creditcredit repair subs or forums and devise a plan of attack and stick to it, take some time off if it is slow going. If you have any open accounts but are behind, try your best to budget and pay down those accounts and prevent them from being charged off.EDIT: grammar, spelling 