Can a Debt Consolidation Service Help You?

The phone rings and it's yet another creditor wondering when you are going to make a payment on your past due account. This is really getting old for you, but what are your options? You have a ton of debt and are going further down a financial hole every month, where your bills are starting to become more than your net income.

You may have thought about filing bankruptcy. Don't do it. Bankruptcy should be your last possible resort option, not one that you seriously consider until you have thoroughly investigated all other possible options.

More and more people who are finding themselves in this situation with the sad shape of today's economy. Things may look brighter for the future, but to get to the "future", you need to successfully get through the present first, hopefully without doing severe damage to your credit report before you get to that "future". You may have considered a debt consolidation loan, but the downside of that is that it is yet another loan and you are pretty much borrowing from Peter to pay Paul, and the interest rate that Peter is charging is going to be sky-high if you have been having financial problems for awhile since that fact will be reflected on your credit report.

Although it may sound like the same thing, you may want to consider debt consolidation services, which is different from a debt consolidation loan. With this type of service, you turn all your bills over to the debt consolidation company and they work with you to establish a budget that you can live with. It is not another loan and it is not bankruptcy, so your credit report is not going to suffer nearly from the long term damage that a bankruptcy filing would have on it.

What happens is that you make monthly payments to the debt consolidation service company and then they distribute that payment to your creditors. It is crucial for you to note that if you miss the payment to the debt consolidation company, then they will not make a payment to your creditors, which is going to put you in an even worse situation than you are now, so make sure you make that payment every month.

On your behalf, the debt consolidation service works with your creditors to lower your interest rate, reduce your payments, and sometimes can even get all those pesky late fees waived or reduced. The end result for your benefit is that if you had, for example, $2700 a month going out before to make payments to your creditors, your payment to the debt consolidation company might only be $1800. These are example figures but the point is that your monthly output is significantly reduced, which should give you the financial breathing room you need while you get your financial house in order.