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Credit Counseling
Credit Counseling can be accomplished in several ways. The most popular way is to enroll the debtor into a debt management plan. The plan works by you paying one sum to the credit counseling agency every month who then in turns distributes your payments directly to the creditors. In some cases, the credit counseling agency is able to convince your credit card companies to lower the interest rate on some of your debts. Although Credit counseling services can provide good financial management information and they may work for you if you have a low debt amount, please review some of the drawbacks:
- Almost every credit counseling company is compensated by your creditors for bringing you in. That is right; they are being paid a percentage of the debt that they forward to the credit card companies. Ask yourself…whose best interest are they really serving?
- Some credit counseling agencies supply relief by extending the length of you repayment terms. This means you may have lower monthly payments, but you may end up paying back up to 150% or more of the original debt!
- These programs can be very long! Many times taking up to 7 years to complete.
- Miss a payment to the credit counseling agency and you could be eliminated from their program or be forced to pay penalties and fees.
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