My name is Steve Bis and I am helping consumers that are in debt with their unsecured credit card debts for a quite some time and am aware of the negative consequences it has on someone’s life. When you have credit card debt and believe that this matter is out of control, you should make a choice on what to do and make it quick. You do not want to procrastinate until it is too late. As many of you must already know is that the debt collectors are not helpful when you call them with complaints with your bill. It’s extremely exciting the way it works because when you first get the card they are pretty nice people when you talk to them. Then if you call them to dispute a late or over limit charge 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 deal with the higher payments now? It was painstaking 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 information on them.
Consumer Bankruptcy
Prior to 2005 bankruptcy was to be used for people who were having severe financial problems. Regrettably it was abused by far too many Americans who wanted to evade paying their credit card debts. They did not want to be accountable for their misgivings. The credit card industry was fed up with this so they pushed to have the legislation changed. It is now referred to as the Bankruptcy Abuse Prevention and Consumer Protection act of 2005. It would make it harder for most consumers to file for bankruptcy. Bankruptcy should only be used as your last resort option after you have explored every conceivable option. Also you should contemplate 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 could cost you a substantial amount of your hard earned income. 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 very negative long lasting effect on your credit.
Texas Debt Consolidation Credit Counseling
Everyway you look, either on TV or the radio, you will hear about consumer credit counseling. A credit counseling agency will try to get the creditors to reduce the interest rate on your credit accounts. You then make one monthly payment to the consumer credit counseling agency and they then make your payments to each one of your creditors on your behalf. The drawback to this method is even though they reduce the APR on your credit card accounts you could still pay back as much as 140% of what you actually owe.
This is because joining this kind of agenda 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 seventy five percent of the individuals that are in these programs don’t complete the program for one reason or another. Another draw back 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 at once. They will also bump up your interest back up and the creditors will not let you back on for around one year and sometimes even longer. This might put you right back to where you started from, if not in a worse situation.
Debt Negotiation (also known as texas debt settlement)
This is the method which can save you the greatest amount of money. A ethical credit card debt settlement company will save you at least 40% of what you actually owe. The 40% should cover all of their charges. Just as with consumer credit counseling, you will hear a lot of radio and television advertisements quite often. These organizations are opening up all over our beloved country. Some of these companies try to make it appear like they have a magic bullet and are going to make all your debt vanish overnight.
There are also many companies that try to use religion to aquire the trust of debtors. Whichever company you are speaking to it is your responsibility to due diligence on them. You can always begin with the BBB (Better Business bureau). You should be able to uncover a lot about a company from them. If you realize that a company has only been in operating for a short time and has a plethora of complaints towards them, then you must stay away. One more thing to look for is how much time has the company been around. Some organizations only make it a short time before they get shut down or get caught ripping people off. Then some of them only stick around to make as much money as they can and close shop just to open up a few miles awayevening.