As a successful software engineer living in the suburbs of Minnesota, Travis Pizel never had an income problem.

With his wife, Vonnie, the couple pulled in a cool six figures each year, more than enough to provide for their two children and still take the occasional weekend getaway.

And if they couldn't afford something when they wanted it, Travis knew exactly where to turn.

As tales of debt often do, his began with one credit card that eventually became two credit cards, then three, and so on. A few years into his marriage, Travis had opened 13 lines of credit and was officially hiding the bills from his wife each month.

"I just stopped talking about how much [debt we were in]," Travis told BI. "Everyone else would go to bed at night and I would be trying to figure out how to move credit balances around, get new credit cards ... whatever it took to keep our finances going."

Within a decade, he amassed $109,000 worth of debt.

It was the summer of 2009 when Pizel hit rock bottom. Chase announced a higher minimum payment requirement, and he was suddenly staring down the prospect of hundreds of dollars more in payments. It was money they didn't have. His house of cards was on the brink of collapse.

"Marriage is built on trust and I didn't do a good job on that," Travis said. "[My wife and I] had a frank discussion on how we got there ... and when it was all over, we started looking for solutions."

Determined to avoid filing personal bankruptcy ("We felt really responsible for the debt we racked up," he explained.), the couple hit the Web for alternative options.

They decided to enroll in a debt management company.

When Travis found a debt management company online, he was dubious at best. The entire concept of paying a company to manage debt was foreign.

Debt management companies (DMPs) aren't exactly the golden parachute their name might bring to mind (and if a company portrays itself as one, it could be a scam). They negotiate a low-interest payment plan with lenders on the consumer's behalf. In return, the consumer agrees to pay off their debts within a certain window of time, typically three to five years, and the DMP disperses a monthly payment across all proper channels. Their fees for doing so are typically around $20/month, though the Pizels pay $50 with their service.

After several hours-long conversations with company representatives, the Pizels signed up for 57 monthly payments of $2,489 each.

There was also a catch: Once enrolled in the service, all of their credit accounts were frozen.

"That was a big commitment to say we weren't going to use credit cards anymore," Travis said. "Even when we enrolled in the program, we had no idea what kind of lifestyle changes we would have to make to make it work."