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Hello my name is Steve Bis and I am working with those that are in debt with their credit cards for a while now and understand the effect it has on people’s lives. When you have credit card debt and believe that the situation is no longer something you can control, you need to make a decision and make it fast. You should not put it off until it is too late. As many of you already know is that the creditors are not very easy to deal with when you contact them with complaints regarding you statement. It’s extremely exciting the way it works because when you initially get the card they are the politest people when you talk to them. Then if you call them to argue against a past due or over limit charge and attempt to have it reversed enough trying to keep up with 10% or even the 7.9 % interest that they are charging on your credit cards. How are you suppose to manage the elevated payments now? It was bad enough to manage before the interest skyrocketed. This is exactly why U.S. consumers are seeking out other options such as debt settlement vs. credit counseling, or bankruptcy. If you are not familiar with any of your 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 families who were having severe money troubles. Sadly it was misused by way too many people who wanted to avoid paying their unsecured debts. They didn’t want to be accountable for their actions. The credit card industry was fed up with this so they petitioned to have the legislation updated. It is now referred to as the Bankruptcy Abuse Prevention and Consumer Protection act of 2005. It would make it more difficult for the majority of debtors to file for bankruptcy. Bankruptcy should only be used as your last resort option after you have considered every other debt relief option. Also you should contemplate the consequences that will come back later down the road. You would have to find an attorney, go to court and that could cost you a substantial amount of money. There is also the issue of it being on your credit history for a long time. When you filling out any important 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 credit.

Consumer Credit Counseling

Everywhere you turn, either it is advertised on the radio or television, you will hear about consumer credit counseling. A credit counseling organization will attempt to get the credit card companies to reduce the interest on your credit accounts. You then make one monthly installment to the credit counseling organization and they then make your payments to each one of your creditors for you. The fallback to this method is even though they reduce the interest on your credit card balances you might still pay back as much as 140% of what you currently owe.

This is because joining this sort 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 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 money problem and are short on your monthly payment they will boot you out of the program straight away. They will also raise your interest back up and the creditor could keep you off the program for around one year and sometimes even longer. This will put you right back to where you began, if not in a worse predicament.

Credit Card Debt Negotiation (also known as debt settlement)

This is the avenue where you can save the greatest amount of money. A good texas debt settlement company will save you at least 40% of what you currently owe. The 40% should cover all of their fees. Very much like credit counseling, you will hear a lot of radio and television ads all the time. These organizations are opening up all across our beloved country. Some of these companies try to make it appear like they have a magical button and are going to make all your debt disappear out of nowhere.

There are also some companies that try to use religion to aquire the trust of people. Whichever organization you intend on hiring it is your responsibility to do research on them. You can always begin with the BBB (Better Business bureau). You should be able to discover quite a bit about a company from the BBB. If you see that a company has only been in settling debts for a little while and has a lot of complaints towards them, then you must avoid them. One more thing to keep an eye out for is how much time has the company been around. Some organizations only survive a short time before they get shut down or get caught with their hands in the cookie jar. Then some of them only stay around to make as much money as they can and close shop just to open up down the streetafternoon.