Hello my name is Mark Whittle and I have been helping people that are in arrears with their credit cards for a long time and understand the effects it has on someone’s life. When you have credit card debt and think that this matter is no longer in your hands, you must make a decision and make it as soon as possible. You do not want to procrastinate until it is too late. As plenty of you must already know is that the creditors are not co-operative when you call them with problems with your statement. It’s very interesting the way it works because when you initially get the card they are pretty nice people while you are on the phone with them. Then if you contact them to complain about a past due or over limit charge and try to have it , they might 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 stop paying your rent/mortgage or other necessities for you and your loved onesto make it with day to day living expenses.
The credit card companies made a whopping 17 billion dollars in over limit and late fees in 2006 and it will be a lot higher this year. Now I am sure that it has happened to you, where you go and open your monthly credit card bill only to find out that your APR has nearly doubled or even tripled. It is bad enough to try and keep up with 9.9% or even the 7.9 % interest that they are charging on your credit cards. How are you suppose to come up with the money for the elevated payments now? It was horrible enough to manage before the interest skyrocketed. This is why many U.S. consumers 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 bit of an education on them.
Bankruptcy
Prior to 2005 bankruptcy was to be used for consumers who were having serious monetary hardships. Regrettably it was abused by tens of thousands of U.S. citizens who were trying to evade paying their unsecured debts. They did not want to take responsibility for their actions. The credit card industry was fed up with this so they pushed to have the laws 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 most Americans to file for help. Bankruptcy should only be made use of as your very last choice after you have tried every conceivable option. Also you should think of the consequences that very well might come back later on down the road. You would have to locate an attorney, go to court and that would run you a substantial amount of your hard earned income. There is also the issue of it being on your FICO report anywhere from 7 to 10 years. When you filling out any significant application or document you by law have to answer yes when inquired about your previous bankruptcy, so this does have a very negative long lasting effect on your ability to obtain future credit.
Debt Consolidation Credit Counseling
Everywhere you turn, either on TV or the radio, you will hear about consumer credit counseling. A credit counseling firm will try to get the creditors to reduce the APR on your credit accounts. You then make one monthly payment to the credit counseling firm and they then pay each one of your creditors for you. The fallback to this method is even though they reduce your interest on your credit card accounts you could still pay back as much as 130% of what you actually owe.
This is because with this kind of program 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 these programs don’t graduate from 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 cannot make your monthly payment they will kick you out of the program at once. They will also raise your interest back up and the creditor could keep you off for at least one year and on some occasions 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 method which can save you 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. Very much like credit counseling, you will hear a lot of TV and radio advertisements all the time. These organizations are popping up all over 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 overnight.
There are even some companies that try to use religion to gain the trust of consumers. Whichever company you are going to use it is your responsibility to do research on them. You can always start with the BBB (Better Business bureau). You will be able to discover quite a bit about a company from the BBB. If you realize 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. Another thing to keep an eye out for is how long has the company been in business. Some organizations only survive a couple of years before they get terminated or get caught stealing people’s hard earned dollars. Then some of them only stick around to earn as much as possible and close shop just to open up down the streetusing a different name.
Mark Whittle is a debt analyst and research assistant with the US Consumer Advocate, which primarily practices in credit card debt relief.
Recent Comments