Let me free myself from the horrors of debt
June 23rd, 2008
Hello my name is Steve Bis and I’ve been working with people that are in arrears with their unsecured credit card debts for a considerable amount of time and am aware of the effect it has on people’s lives. When you have credit card debt and know that the situation is out of control, you must make a choice on what to do and make it fast. You don’t want to procrastinate until it is too late. As the majority of you bye now already know is that the debt collectors are not polite when you contact them with complaints with your statement. It’s extremely exciting the way it works because when you first obtain the card they are very polite people when you are speaking to them. Then if you call them to dispute a past due or over limit penalty fee and try to have it , they might let you off one time a year, if you are lucky. When it comes down to it what decision are you going to make. It’s not like you can stop making payments on your rent/mortgage or other necessities for your familyget bye with day to day expenses.
The credit card companies made upwards of 17 billion dollars in penalty fees last year and it will be horrifyingly higher this year. Now I am pretty sure that it has happened to you, where you’ve gone and open your credit card statement only to find out that your interest rate has about doubled in some cases tripled. It is rough enough to try and maintain payments with 10% or even the 7.9 % interest that they are charging on your accounts. How are you suppose to afford the higher payments now? It was bad enough to manage before the interest skyrocketed. This is exactly why 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 information on them.
Bankruptcy
Up until late 2004 bankruptcy was to be used for debtors who were going through serious money hardships. Sadly it was mistreated by thousands of debtors who were attempting to evade paying their unsecured debts. They didn’t want to take responsibility for their misgivings. The credit card industry was fed up with this so they petitioned to have the bankruptcy laws changed. It is now referred to 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 used as your last resort option after you have explored every alternative method. Also you should contemplate the consequences that will come back later down the road. You would have to find an attorney, go to court and that would cost you a lot of money. There is also the negative effect of it being on your credit report anywhere from 7 to 10 years. When you sign any significant application or document you will always 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.
Texas Debt Consolidation Credit Counseling
Everywhere you turn, either on TV or the radio, you will hear about credit counseling. A credit counseling organization will try to get the credit card companies to lower the interest rate on your credit accounts. You then make one monthly payment to the credit counseling organization and they then pay each one of your creditors for you. The drawback to this option is even though they lower your interest charge on your credit card accounts you might still pay back as much as 125% of what you actually owe.
This is because with this kind of plan you will still be paying back what the full original balance was plus some of the interest for around possibly five years or more. Almost eighty percent of the debtors that are in these programs don’t complete the program for one reason or another. Another downfall to credit counseling is that if you have a cash flow problem and are cannot make your monthly payment they will boot you off of the program immediately. They will also raise your interest back up and the creditors will not let you back on for around one year and perhaps even longer. This could put you right back to where you started from, if not in a worse situation.
This is the method where you can save the largest amount of money. A competent 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. The same with credit counseling, you will hear a lot of TV and radio advertisements all the time. These companies are opening up everywhere across America. Some of these companies try to make it seem like they have a magical stick 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 people. No matter what organization you are speaking to it is your responsibility to do research on them. You should begin with the BBB (Better Business bureau). You may be able to uncover quite a bit about a company from them. If you soon realize that a company has only been in settling debts for a little while and has a lot of complaints towards 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 last a couple of years before they get shut down or get caught with their hands in the cookie jar. Then some of them only stay around to make as much money as they can and close shop just to open up right next doorusing a different name.
Why is getting out of debt one of the hardest things to do in life?
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