In 3 years of reasonable payments you will have all your debt gone (or if you have no assets outside a house and cheap car, chapter 7 even, with your debt gone near instantly).

Chapter 13 doesn't last a long time, and was designed for your case. The point is not to take a productive citizen and hang upon a yoke of debt for much of their life.

In either case, with 150k of debt, you're going to be in the credit crapper for much longer by NOT declaring bankruptcy.

Random google page on the difference between the two: http://www.creditinfocenter.com/bankruptcy/chapter13BK.shtml...

I've known a couple people who went through bankruptcy, and all of them have felt much better afterwords, both immediately and years later.