My name is Steve Bis and I am assisting those that are in arrears with their credit cards for a while and understand the effect it has on their lives. When you have credit card debt and know that the situation is no longer in your hands, you should make a choice on what to do and make it ASAP. 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 co-operative when you contact them with complaints regarding your statements. It’s pretty exciting the way it works because when you first obtain the card they are very polite people while you talk to them. Then if you contact them to complain about a past due or over limit charge and attempt to have it , they may let you off with one 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 secured debts for your family to survive with day to day living expenses.
The credit card industry made upwards of 17 billion dollars in over limit and late fees last year and it will be much 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 realize that your interest rate has nearly doubled or even tripled. It is bad enough trying to maintain payments 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 new payments now? It was horrible 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 do not know much about these 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 experiencing serious financial problems. Regrettably it was mistreated by far too many U.S. citizens who were attempting to evade paying their unsecured debts. They did not want to take responsibility for their actions. The credit card companies were sick and tired of this so they petitioned to have the legislation updated. 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 most consumers to file for bankruptcy. Bankruptcy should only be exercised as your last resort option after you have considered every other debt relief option. Also you should understand the consequences that could come back later on down the road. You would have to hire a lawyer, go to court and that could run you a lot of your hard earned income. There is also the negative effect of it being on your credit 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 it is advertised on the radio or television, you will hear about credit counseling. A credit counseling company will attempt to get the credit card companies to reduce the interest rate on your credit cards. You then make one monthly installment to the consumer credit counseling company and they then make your payments to each one of your creditors on your behalf. The fallback to this option is even though they reduce your interest on your credit card accounts you very well may still pay back as much as 125% of what you actually owe.
This is because on this sort 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 50% of the debtors 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 income problem and are short on your monthly payment they will boot you out of the program instantly. They will also bump up your interest back up and the creditor could keep you off the program for at least one year and sometimes even longer. This could put you right back to where you started from, if not in a tougher situation.
Credit Card Debt Negotiation texas (also known as Texas debt settlement)
This is the method which can save you the most amount of money. A good debt settlement company will save you at least 40% of what you actually owe. The 40% should include all of their fees. As with consumer credit counseling, you will hear a lot of TV and radio advertisements very frequently. These organizations are popping up everywhere across the United States. Some of these companies try to make it sound like they have a magic stick and are going to make all your debt vanish out of nowhere.
There are also many companies that try to use religion to aquire the trust of consumers. No matter what company you are going to use it is your responsibility to due diligence on them. You can always begin with the BBB (Better Business bureau). You may be able to find out a lot about a company from the BBB. If you find out that a company has only been in operating for a short time and has a plethora of complaints towards them, then you must avoid them. Another thing to keep an eye out for is how much time has the company been around. Some organizations only survive a couple of years before they go out of business or get caught with their paws in the cookie jar. Then some of them only stick around to make as much as possible and close down just to open up down the streetday.