Methods to secure your debt freedom quickly
Hello my name is Steve Bis and I’ve been working with consumers that are in debt with their unsecured credit card debts for a quite some time and realize the negative consequences it has on their lives. When you have credit card debt and know that the situation is out of control, you would be smart to make a decision and make it as soon as you can. You do not want to wait until it is too late. As plenty of you bye now already know is that the creditors are not polite when you contact them with issues with your statement. It’s extremely fascinating the way it works because when you first get the card they are pretty nice people when you call. Then if you contact them to argue against a late or over limit penalty fee and try to have it waived 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 cover the new payments now? It was dreadful enough to manage before the interest skyrocketed. This is why many Americans are seeking out other options such as debt settlement vs. credit counseling, or bankruptcy. If you are not familiar with any of your options then I will give you a little bit of an education on them.
Bankruptcy
Up until late 2004 bankruptcy was to be used for individuals who were experiencing severe monetary problems. Sadly it was misused by way too many consumers who wanted to evade paying their unsecured debts. They didn’t want to take responsibility for their actions. The credit card companies were fed up with this so they petitioned to have the legislation changed. It is now known as the Bankruptcy Abuse Prevention and Consumer Protection act of 2005. It would make it much more of a task for many debtors to file for chapter 7 bankruptcy. Bankruptcy should only be made use of as your last resort option after you have tried every conceivable option. Also you should think of the negative aftereffects that very well might come back later down the road. You would have to find a lawyer, go to court and that could cost you a substantial amount of your hard earned income. There is also the matter of it being on your FICO history anywhere from 7 to 10 years. When you filling out any significant application or document you by law have to say yes when asked the question about bankruptcy, so this does have a long lasting effect on your ability to obtain future credit.
Debt Consolidation Credit Counseling
Everyway you turn, either on TV or the radio, you will hear about debt consolidation credit counseling. A credit counseling company will try to get the creditors to lower the interest on your credit accounts. You then make one monthly payment to the consumer credit counseling company and they then pay each one of your creditors for you. The fallback to this choice is even though they lower your interest charge on your credit card accounts you very well may still pay back as much as 135% of what you actually owe.
This is because on this kind of agenda you will still be paying back what the full original balance was plus some of the interest for around 4 to 7 years. Almost 75% of the consumers that are in credit counseling don’t graduate from the program for one reason or another. Another downfall to credit counseling is that if you have a income problem and are miss your monthly payment they will kick you off of the program without delay. They will also bump up your interest back up and the creditors could keep you off for at least one year and perhaps even longer. This might put you right back to where you started from, if not in a worse predicament.
This is the method where you can save the largest amount of money. A reputable credit card debt settlement company will save you at least 40% of what you are said to have to payback. The 40% should include all the fees as well. Similar to consumer credit counseling, you will hear a lot of TV and radio advertisements quite often. These organizations are popping up all across America. Some of these companies try to make it sound like they have a magic wand and are going to make all your debt disappear overnight.
There are even some companies that try to use religion to obtain the trust of debtors. Whichever organization you are talking to it is your responsibility to due diligence on them. You should begin with the BBB (Better Business bureau). You might be able to uncover quite a bit about a company from the Better Business Bureau. If you find out that a company has only been in operating for a short time and has a slew of complaints towards them, then you must stay away. One more thing to look for is how long has the company been around. Some organizations only make it a couple of years before they get shut down or get caught stealing people’s money. Then some of them only stay around to make as much money as they can and close down just to open up across the streetafternoon.
Debt reduction is the best way to quickly get the credit card debt off of your back.