hi there my name is MAtt and I have been helping consumers that are in arrears with their credit cards for a long time and understand the negative consequences it has on people’s lives. When you have credit card debt and know that the situation is no longer in your hands, you need to make a choice on what to do and make it ASAP. You don’t want to wait until it is too late. As the majority of you bye now already know is that the creditors are not very easy to deal with when you contact them with complaints with your statement. It’s very fascinating the way it works because when you first obtain the card they are very polite people while you are speaking with them. Then if you call them to argue against a late or over limit charge and try to have it removed enough to try and maintain payments with 8% or even the 7.9 % interest that they are charging on your accounts. How are you suppose to cover the higher payments now? It was horrible enough to manage before the interest skyrocketed. This is why many U.S. citizens are seeking out other options such as credit card 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 consumers who were going through serious money hardships. Sadly it was abused by way too many Americans who wanted to avoid paying their debts. They did not want to be accountable for their misgivings. The credit card industry was sick and tired of this so they lobbied to have the bankruptcy legislation updated. It is now referred to as the Bankruptcy Abuse Prevention and Consumer Protection act of 2005. It would make it much more of a task for many consumers to file for help. 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 could come back later on down the road. You would have to hire an attorney, go to court and that would cost you a lot of money. There is also the problem of it being on your FICO report for a long time. When you filling out any important application or document you by law have to answer yes when asked the question about bankruptcy, so this does have a very negative long lasting effect on your credit.
Debt Consolidation Texas Credit Counseling is a great way to lose the debt however just not that quickly.
In each direction you turn, either it is advertised on the radio or television, you will hear about consumer credit counseling. A credit counseling company will try to get the credit card companies to lower the APR on your credit accounts. You then make one monthly installment to the consumer credit counseling company and they then pay each one of your creditors on your behalf. The fallback to this option is even though they lower the interest on your credit card accounts you might still pay back as much as 120% of what you actually owe.
This is because joining this sort of program you will still be paying back what you owe plus some of the interest for around 4 to 7 years. Almost eighty percent of the people that are in these programs don’t complete the program for missing as much as one payment. Another problem to credit counseling is that if you have a income problem and are cannot make your monthly payment they will boot you off of the program straight away. 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 will put you right back to where you started from, if not in a worse predicament.
Debt Negotiation (also known as debt settlement)
This is the option where you can save the greatest amount of money. A honest 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. The same with consumer credit counseling, you will hear a lot of radio and television advertisements very frequently. These organizations are opening up all across the United States. Some of these companies try to make it appear like they have a magic stick and are going to make all your debt vanish overnight.
There are also some companies that try to use religion to obtain the trust of consumers. Whatever company you are speaking to 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 quite a bit about a company from the Better Business Bureau. If you find out that a company has only been in business for a short time and has a slew of complaints towards them, then you must avoid them. Another thing to keep an eye out for is how long has the company been in business. Some organizations only last a short time 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 townafternoon.