Comments on: Is Credit Card Consolidation the Solution You Have Been Looking For?

By: Jane Y

Jane Y — Fri, 07 Nov 2008 09:48:29 +0000

You have 3 different choices here:

1. Negotiated Debt Settlement
2. Consumer Credit Counseling
3. Debt Consolidation Loan

Except the loan, both, credit counseling and debt settlement, are going to negatively impact your credit. In credit counseling, you are paying a third party to make payments on your behalf, and in return the credit counseling firm is supposed to get you discounts on late fees and interest rates to "ideally" get the debt paid of quicker. These programs usually do not work, primarily because, no one agency has great relations ships with all creditors and more so because more than half of them were funded by credit card companies themselves. These programs can take anything from 4 – 6 years to complete.

Also, many of your future lenders and creditors are going to see that you enrolled in a credit counseling program, and are basically going to think that you cannot handle you finances well.

Negotiated debt settlement, basically saves your money in an escrow account and then makes lump sum settlement payments to each of your creditors ONE AT A TIME. I cannot stress that enough. Most people do not understand this concept, as while you are saving money, no payments are bieng made to the creditors. This will definitely impact your credit. But you have to look at it in a sense that you take this time to get rid of your debt completely, and you can repair/recover your credit after you have gotten the debts paid of. Debt settlement programs take about 18 tp 36 months to complete, so you are looking at a definite timeline to eliminate your debts.

Keep in mind that both these options will only work with credit card debts and not your student or auto loans.

The third option is to get another debt consolidation loan, but given your limited income and high amount of debt, I doubt that you will be successful in getting approved for a low interest loan for 25K (which is what you need to get all your credit card debt into one loan.

You can also try to consolidate your student loans seperately.

By: tresbe1n

tresbe1n — Fri, 07 Nov 2008 05:52:52 +0000

maybe you ought to just forget about them if your credit is already damaged, keep using them to buy stuff, then when you run out of credit on your credit cards, declare bancruptcy

By: ambertks

ambertks — Fri, 07 Nov 2008 04:52:52 +0000

29% is mad. I wouldn't advice you to ever get behind if you want to maintain any credit ratings which could be the only positive thing out of this situation.
There are plenty of places that'll lend you money to pay it all off on less interest, so this might be a less steep way out of it.
You surely need a fair amount so I don't know but whatever you can get at a lesser % is always better than nothing.
Perhaps this can help http://credit—card.org/ good luck

By: impactfitness2k

impactfitness2k — Fri, 07 Nov 2008 01:52:48 +0000

Most if not all of these so called "debt consolidation companies are a scam.

What they do is not pay your creditors for months and then try and settle with them for less. No special skills. They just don't pay.
They also charge a fee everymonth to do this.

Your creditors do not have to talk with these people. It's your debt.
Also, if they don't pay your creditors. You, and you alone are still responsible for the debt. Your creditors will sue you and not the company you hired.

By: TheTroubadourMusic

TheTroubadourMusic — Thu, 06 Nov 2008 21:25:00 +0000

how is this not a real photo?

By: warah110

warah110 — Thu, 06 Nov 2008 07:24:09 +0000

Perfect.

By: baby_belle13

baby_belle13 — Thu, 06 Nov 2008 04:57:29 +0000

Debt consolidation programs usually leave you worse off than you were originally. My suggestion would be to call your creditors and ask them if they could get you onto a payment plan that will work for you. Also, pick the card with the lowest rate and ask them if you could consolidate all of your debt to their card with the agreement that you will close other cards. They may do this, and then you will only have to make 1 payment per month and deal with 1 company when you're having trouble making payments. If this isn't an option, try to make your minimum payments while any extra money goes to the card with the highest interest rate.

By: monkeymanbob

monkeymanbob — Wed, 05 Nov 2008 20:26:48 +0000

Nice work, you did pretty good.

By: lle672

lle672 — Wed, 05 Nov 2008 18:30:09 +0000

its very hard to get one actually!! i just recently got a loan, but i had to have a co signer with great credit!!! beacuse i needed like $15,000 to pay off my credit cards. and they normally only loan out a max of about half that!! all you can do is keep trying.

By: champ0y

champ0y — Wed, 05 Nov 2008 12:39:07 +0000

You’re really good man. You’ve got excellent talent.