Credit card debt settlement is the best method of debt reduction
On June 25, 2008 in General
My name is Steve Bis and I have been helping consumers that are in debt with their credit cards for a quite some time and understand the negative consequences it has on someone’s life. When you have credit card debt and think that the situation is no longer in your hands, you must make a choice on what to do and make it quick. You do not want to wait until it is too late. As plenty of you must already know is that the debt collectors are not helpful when you call them with complaints with billing. It’s extremely exciting the way it works because when you initially get the card they are very polite people while you are on the phone. Then if you contact them to complain about a past due or over limit penalty fee and attempt to have it , they may let you off with one a year, if that agent is in a pleasant mood. When it comes down to it what choices do you have? It’s not like you can discontinue paying your rent/mortgage or other necessities for your familyget bye with day to day expenses.
The credit card companies made a smooth 17 billion dollars in over limit and late fees last year and it will be considerably higher in the near future. Now I am sure that it has happened to you, where you go and open your monthly credit card statement only to discover that your interest has just about doubled or even tripled. It is bad enough trying to keep up with 10% or even the 7.9 % interest that they are charging on your accounts. How are you suppose to come up with the money for the higher payments now? It was dreadful enough to manage before the interest skyrocketed. This is the reason Americans are seeking out 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 bit of an education on them.
Consumer Bankruptcy
Prior to 2005 bankruptcy was to be used for individuals who were going through severe money problems. Sadly it was mistreated by thousands of Americans who were trying to avoid paying their debts. They didn’t want to be accountable for their actions. The credit card industry was fed up with this so they lobbied to have the 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 many Americans to file for chapter 7 bankruptcy. Bankruptcy should only be exercised as your very last choice after you have tried every conceivable method. Also you should understand the negative aftereffects that could come back later on down the road. You would have to find a lawyer, go to court and that could cost you a substantial amount of money. There is also the issue of it being on your FICO history for a long time. When you filling out any significant application or document you will always have to answer yes when asked the question about bankruptcy, so this does have a long lasting effect on your credit.
Consumer Credit Counseling
Everyway you look, either on TV or the radio, you will hear about debt consolidation credit counseling. A credit counseling company will attempt to get the credit card companies to lower the interest on your credit cards. You then make one monthly installment to the consumer credit counseling company and they then make your payments to each one of your creditors on your behalf. The downside to this choice 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 currently owe.
This is because with this kind of program you will still be paying back what you owe plus some of the interest for around 4 to 7 years. Almost 50% of the individuals that are in credit counseling don’t finish the program for missing as much as one payment. Another draw back to credit counseling is that if you have a money problem and are miss your monthly payment they will boot you out of the program at once. They will also bump up your interest back up and the creditor will not let you back on for a minimum of one year and perhaps even longer. This will put you right back to where you began, if not in a tougher situation.
This is the debt relief method which can save you the largest amount of money. A good credit card debt settlement company will save you at least 40% of what you owe. The 40% should cover all of their fees. Just as with consumer credit counseling, you will hear a lot of radio and television ads very frequently. These organizations are popping up all over America. Some of these companies try to make it appear like they have a magic wand and are going to make all your debt vanish instantly.
There are even many companies that try to use religion to aquire the trust of debtors. No matter what company you are speaking with it is your responsibility to due diligence on them. You can always start with the BBB (Better Business bureau). You may be able to discover a lot about a company from them. If you discover that a company has only been in business for a little while and has a lot of complaints towards them, then you know to avoid them. One more thing to keep an eye out for is how long has the company been around. Some organizations only last one or two years before they go out of business or get caught stealing people’s hard earned dollars. Then some of them only stick around to make as much money as they can and close down just to open up across townusing a different name.
When do the good debt settlement companies call the debt collectors? when you are prepared to settle the account with enough money to do so.