Learn the path of debt relief and find financial freedom
My name is Steve Bis and I’ve been working with people that are in arrears with their unsecured credit card debts for a quite some time and am aware of the negative consequences it has on their lives. When you have credit card debt and believe that this matter is no longer something you can control, you should make a decision and make it quick. You do not want to put it off until it is too late. As many of you must already know is that the creditors are not helpful when you speak to them with problems with your bill. It’s extremely interesting the way it works because when you first obtain the card they are pretty nice people when you are speaking to them on the phone. Then if you call them to argue against a past due or over limit penalty fee and try to have it removed enough to try and keep up with 10% or even the 7.9 % interest that they are charging on your accounts. How are you suppose to pay for the new payments now? It was bad enough to manage before the interest skyrocketed. This is the reason Americans are searching for other options such as debt settlement vs. credit counseling, or bankruptcy. If you do not know much about these options then I will give you a little information on them.
Bankruptcy
Up until late 2004 bankruptcy was to be used for individuals who were going through serious monetary troubles. Sadly it was mistreated by tens of thousands of Americans who were trying to avoid paying their debts. They didn’t want to take responsibility for their actions. The credit card industry was sick and tired of this so they pushed to have the bankruptcy legislation changed. It is now known as the Bankruptcy Abuse Prevention and Consumer Protection act of 2005. This would make it much more of a task for most Americans to file for help. Bankruptcy should only be considered as your last resort option after you have explored every conceivable option. Also you should think of the negative aftereffects that very well might come back later on down the road. You would have to locate a lawyer, go to court and that would run you a substantial amount of your hard earned income. There is also the problem of it being on your FICO history for a long time. When you sign any significant application or document you by law have to answer yes when asked the question about bankruptcy, so this does have a extremely long lasting effect on your ability to obtain future credit.
Debt Consolidation Credit Counseling
Everyway you turn, either it is advertised on the radio or television, you will hear about debt consolidation credit counseling. A credit counseling agency will try to get the creditors to lower the interest rate on your credit cards. You then make one monthly payment to the consumer credit counseling agency and they then pay each one of your creditors for you. The down fall to this method is even though they lower your interest charge on your credit card accounts you could still pay back as much as 120% of what you actually owe.
This is because joining this sort of agenda you will still be paying back what you owe plus some of the interest for around possibly five years or more. Almost 50% of the people that are in these programs don’t graduate from the program for one reason or another. Another draw back to credit counseling is that if you have a cash flow problem and are cannot make your monthly payment they will kick you out of the program at once. They will also increase your interest back up and the creditor could keep you off the program for at least one year and sometimes even longer. This will put you right back to where you began, if not in a worse predicament.
Credit Card Debt Negotiation (also known as Texas debt settlement)
This is the option which can save you the most amount of money. A reputable debt settlement company will save you at least 40% of what you currently owe. The 40% should cover all of their charges. Just as with consumer credit counseling, you will hear a lot of TV and radio advertisements very frequently. These companies are starting up everywhere across our beloved country. Some of these companies try to make it seem like they have a magical stick and are going to make all your debt disappear out of nowhere.
There are also many companies that try to use religion to attain the trust of people. Whichever organization you are going to hire it is your responsibility to do research on them. You can always begin with the BBB (Better Business bureau). You should be able to uncover a lot about a company from the BBB. If you find out that a company has only been in business for a short time and has a plethora of complaints against them, then you know to stay away. One more thing to keep an eye out for is how much time has the company been in business. Some companies only survive a short time before they go out of business or get caught with their hands in the cookie jar. Then some of them only stick around to earn as much as possible and close down just to open up across townunder a new company name.
Debt Reduction is a process that should not be taken lightly in order to achieve the results you will be looking for.