You have to wonder what is safe anymore.

If the bills about which you are talking are unsecured debt in the form of credit card bills and you carry a balance you'll never get out of with 18% interest, you should just stop paying those bills. Chances are your credit score is already bad. They'll never actually sue you--just harrass you with phone calls. You can live with that.

This is everyone's one "get out of jail free card."

Sorry to hear this, it's horrible. I've got that Paypal and when you hear things like this you get paranoid about using it. I mean these things are supposed to be 100% secure. How did they manage to hack into it?

If you liquidate your guitar to pay the bank some paper fiat money, you'll be doing the bank's work for it. Actually you'll do what the bank cannot do to you--take your guitar. Don't do it. Here's what I mean.

Unless you are talking about the electricity and water bill, or car bill and you need a car to get to work, and/or the mortgage if you can afford it and don't plan on losing the property (or rent), which of course must be paid, the following applies to unsecured credit card debt:

As I stated, first, if you just stop paying, the only consequence is likely to be that they harass you with automated phone calls. It is very unlikely that Chase or Citibank will take the time to actually sue you in court.

Even if they do sue you, you can always file bankruptcy at the very last minute when they are knocking on your door to liquidate your stuff, except there's no need to even do that because unless you have hundreds of thousands of dollars of stuff, it's not worth it to them. You get to except up to $3500 in personal property even in a chapter 7 bankruptcy.

The bottom line is it's not real money--it's just pixels on a computer screen, literally. The only real money is human labor and the fruits of human labor: energy, food, and shelter. And durable goods that are useful, such as refridgerators, cars, guns, electric guitars, clothing, and washing machines.

EVEN IF it ever got to the point that the bank would bother to execute on a final judgment against you, that would be 3 years from now, and the worst case scenario then (in your mind) is that the sheriff comes in with a writ of execution and takes your guitar and sofa to sell at auction, which they'd never bother to do anyway because the american standard strat, as awesome as we all know it is, is only worth about $400 at auction or $600 or $800 now.

And in the intervening 3 years you might get back on your feet, or the fiat money system will finally collapse once and for all, in which case it also would have been a good idea to keep your durable goods acquired when you still could.

Even if the doomsday scenario is not real, which I hope it's not, again, if you sell your guitar NOW to raise a measly $650 drop in the bucket to give the bank NOW, you will have saved the bank from the work it has to do to bother (unlikely to do it) taking your guitar pursuant to a writ of execution THREE YEARS from now.

Keep your guitar if you are talking about credit card bills.

Yes, sell it if you are talking about rent, mortgage (and you don't want to lose the house because it's upside down), electric, water, or other necessities, such as potentially car payment.

If the bills about which you are talking are unsecured debt in the form of credit card bills and you carry a balance you'll never get out of with 18% interest, you should just stop paying those bills. Chances are your credit score is already bad. They'll never actually sue you--just harrass you with phone calls. You can live with that.

This is the worst advice Ive ever heard. They will sue you

Unknown...still under investigation.

If the bills about which you are talking are unsecured debt in the form of credit card bills and you carry a balance you'll never get out of with 18% interest, you should just stop paying those bills. Chances are your credit score is already bad. They'll never actually sue you--just harrass you with phone calls. You can live with that.

Or he could, I don't know, do the Honest and Right Thing, and PAY HIS BILLS (kinda like he's doing?)...

As much as it sucks to have to sell a guitar to pay your bills, the OP's doing the right thing. This whole "Find a loophole and don't do what you should" crap is a burr under my saddle.

Yes, the banks are run by crooks. That doesn't make me less responsible for the money I spend or the the things I buy.

BTW, I have had to sell more than one guitar (and amp, and albums from my record collection and childhood toys that were collectible) and work more than one job at a time to pay my bills. As much as I hated to do it, I got over it...because I'm an adult, not a whiny teenager.

To the OP: This is not a criticism of you--it looks like you're doing the right thing. I'm criticizing W&B for encouraging the irresponsible "Occupy Wall Street" attitude he's promoting. I hope you can get the PayPal thing fixed very quickly.