I believe you have a solid theory and not some half-baked claim being made with no true substance behind it like we have seen in some other instances.
I would argue that Maura was about to have the credit card charges dropped and therefore, she was in no current trouble at the time she disappeared.
And I would also wonder, that if maura was indeed still on the hook for troubles and still looking at being kicked out of the nursing program, then how could you be so dismmisive that (with her world crumbling around her) that maura wasn't depressed and potentially suicidal at the time she disappeared.
Problems are problems, but to young people without a ton of life experience, problems can be much larger (to them) than they actually are.
Maura was in burlington in October of 2003 and had hand written directions back to the area (found in her car) on the day she went missing. And yet no one thinks there is any kind of relevance????
Yes, Maura ended up in the white mountains instead, (Which according to her father, she had been there in the summer before she went missing) and yet no one finds common ground there???
But yet, we here maura eats pizza and we automatically assume she is bullimic?
Or we hear she went and stayed with her father at a hotel, so we assume she is sleeping with him (Hello, hotels feature rooms with two beds in them almost everywhere you go).
I just don't understand the thought process, I guess.......
By the way, I am sort of ranting, so don't think I am talking about you specifically. I do think you have a good working theory to go off of. With my theory of suicide, I always felt Maura was more in a thinking out process than just go and off myself mode. (The fact she brought some (not neccessarily valuable but sentimental items with her leads me to believe that).