Debt

Credit Card Consolidation – Resolve Debts Faster

September 6, 2010 By Robert

Are you having trouble paying your credit card bills? Are you getting warning notices from your creditors? Are your accounts being turned down to collection agencies? If your answer to all these questions is yes, then you need to do credit card consolidation. Remember that you are not alone. There are millions of people who are facing such credit card debt related problems. You can consolidate your credit card debts in two simple methods. Read on to know about them.

Debt consolidation program

You can go for credit card consolidation with the help of a debt consolidation program. You can enjoy the following benefits if you sign up with a debt consolidation company.

Lower monthly payments: In a debt consolidation program, your debt consultant will negotiate with your creditors and attempt to lower the interest rates on your credit card debts. With lower interest rates, your monthly payments also reduce helping you to pay off your debts in affordable monthly payments.
Single monthly payment: If you enroll in a debt consolidation company, you will have to make single monthly payments. Instead of making multiple payments to multiple creditors, you now just need to make a single monthly payment to the debt consolidation company. They will pay off your creditors as the money in the account starts to accumulate.
Eliminates late fees and penalties: If you have accrued a huge amount of late fees and penalties resulting from late payments, then you can eliminate them with credit card consolidation. You can save a lot of money by taking help of debt consolidation companies.
Rebuilds your credit score: By reducing your debts with a debt consolidation program, you can also rebuild your credit score. Since your debt consultant starts making regular payments to your creditors, you can rebuild your credit score in this way.

Debt consolidation loan

You can also consolidate your credit card debts with a debt consolidation loan. A debt consolidation loan is taken to consolidate all your unsecured debts. Here also you can lower your monthly payments and decrease the interest rate on your debts.

So, if you are overburdened with huge amount of unsecured debts, then consider credit card consolidation. Pay off your debts and lead a stress-free life.

Getting Out of Debt

June 19, 2010 By Sherry Tingley

Debt is the single largest self induced headache one can have. We do it to ourselves and we don’t realize the consequences we will pay. When we justify spending money that we don’t currently have, it is like taking a shovel and digging a deep debt hole for ourselves.

Credit card debt is like a cancer. At first you don’t even notice how far down the hole you are going. It starts of small and over time it creeps up on you and before you know it you are thousands of dollars in debt. There are a myriad of excuses that we use to tell ourselves that just this one time, it won’t hurt or I’ll have money next week, the week after that or next month or the next raise. Many of these projections into the future never come true.

The truth is, there are times that using our line of credit is necessary but the problem is, those times aren’t clearly understood by a lot of people. If you don’t understand the difference between needs and desires, you may throw caution to the wind and start digging your debt hole bigger. True emergencies can arise where using our line of credit is our only choice. If that is the case, then the need should truly be necessary for our physical survival and not our mental health survival.

It has often been said that all people are one illness away from bankruptcy. Medical emergencies constitute many of life’s unplanned expenditures. Make sure you have insurance to prevent this from destroying your financial stability.

Debt-Free On Any Income

March 31, 2010 By Sherry Tingley

Financial security may be hard to imagine for a lot of people. To acquire this type of security means that you will have to make sacrifices to achieve debt free living. If you have gotten yourself into debt for medical reasons, lost jobs, over speculating or even the bitter sweet problem of self indulgence, then you will need to find a way to crawl out from the burden of debt.

debt-free-living — Not what you were expecting?

Debt has two faces. One face is called good debt. Good debt is for purchases like housing or schooling that will increase in value over time. The other face of debt is ugly. It’s consumer debt on credit cards that have interest rates that are not tax deductible and can rise over time.

Many books have been written about getting out of debt, which most agree that they want to do. Some dream that they want to become debt free and some people actually do become debt free.

Lyle and Tracy Shamo have written a book called, “Debt-Free On Any Income.” It has an excel spreadsheet program that can help you list all of your debt and pay it down systematically. This is a good system to use and will help you get out of debt.

Let’s say you have four credit cards that have a variety of debt on them. Say for example the balances are $7,540, $238, $4,333, and $1,980. You are looking at a $14,091 debt. That should be enough to wake you up that you need a better payoff plan.

One way to tackle this debt is to make the minimum payments on each account. Then you are easily looking at a very long time before you’ll be debt free, but your credit score will stay intact. Say you decide that you are going to use $200 every month to pay towards your credit card debt. You would want to take the $238.00 debt and put money towards paying off that amount.

When you are done with that bill, you use the same $200 and put it towards the $1,980 debt until it is paid off. Theoretically you should now have more than $200 to put towards your monthly debt. Not having the minimum payment for these two bills could free up maybe $75 a month. So now you can put $275 a month toward your $4,333 bill. As you continue doing this, your monthly minimum payments will go down and the amount you can put towards your debt payoff will go up. By the time you are solely focusing on the largest debt, you’ll have more to pay that off every month.

The key to this plan though is to not incur more debt at the same time you are doing this. Basically you need to decide to quit spending money that is not in your bank account. When that becomes a lifelong habit, you won’t have to face these problems again and again.

The Bank of America/MBNA has issued credit cards and consumer debt they report is $194.70 billion. This includes the U.S., Spain, Canada, Ireland and the U.K. The average credit card debt per household is $16,007, according to CreditCard.com.

All of us can use a little help in controlling consumer debt and living a debt-free lifestyle. Practice using the payoff techniques and the spending rules and it won’t be long before you are on your way to becoming debt free.

Debt consolidation

December 1, 2009 By Sherry Tingley

Having debt is nothing to be ashamed of. There are not many in the world that do not have some kind of debt in one form or another. You may have debt from your credit cards, your home loans, auto loans or student loans. Debt actually is now an uncomfortable part of life, whether we like it or not. Having too much debt and not having the money to pay for it is where the people get into trouble. In these trying times of the economy and rising interest rates, you need a solution that will get you out of debt or simply help you make your payments. The answer to this is debt consolidation.

Debt consolidation is a choice preferred by many not only to relieve the financial pressure but also to manage the debt more accurately by paying just one monthly payment. It is financially helpful and convenient as well.

How do you consolidate your debts and where will you ask for assistance? Let us take a look at the second concern first. There are lending institutions who are willing to consolidate your debt for your. The trick is finding the one that has the lowest interest rate. If you consolidate with a bank that has high interest rates, it would be impractical and foolish for because you would have to pay more. If you go to a lending firm that has the same interest rate as you have now, then the only help you get is convenience when it is the financial assistance you are really going after.

After finding the right lending institution for you, you may need to first pay off your smaller debts. You would not like that to mix with your debt consolidation.

Probably the cheapest way to go about consolidating your debt is to access the capital from the equity in your home loan. This is an essential advantage for the interest rates will definitely be lower than the rate of your credit card agreements.

Now, how about those who do not have enough equity available in their mortgage? There is still hope for you if this is the case. You could just refinance your property. This way, you will have in hand extra capital to be able to pay off your other debts having much lower interest rates. If you still feel like you need sometime before you get your finances back into shape, you can request a longer repayment term. The more years or months you add to your term, the less monthly payment you will get, but the more interest you will have to pay.

Secured loans are popular among property owners. This is because it is the property is considered the security of the loan lender. Secured loans usually offer long repayment terms, low interest rate and large loan amount.

The next time you are in debt, you know now some feasible options for you. There are a lot of lending institutions willing to consolidate your loan for you. Plus, banks appreciate it when people take the initiative to pay off their debt. They are more than willing to serve.

How People Get Into a Spiral of Credit Card Debt

August 12, 2009 By Sherry Tingley

Credit cards were actually introduced to help people make payment without carrying a lot of cash. The benefits of credit cards are many and people have always been using these cards in different situations to deal with their needs. But, today, it seems like credit cards are loaded with booby-traps and suck people into a spiral of card debt.

There are lots of reasons why credit card debt is really becoming a big problem. The biggest reason is that housing prices are down and people are not interested in home equity loans. It is due to this particular reason that plastic has again become a favorite option for many business persons. They get credit cards, use it irrationally, and find them debt.

The next big reason is the fact that people can not resist the temptation of getting a credit card all adorned with special offers. For instance, people now just love to get a new and shiny business card, airline miles, zero percent interest and discounts on rent-a-cars. Apparently it feels like this card is going to give them a lot, but things always work in a different way. These offers are only used to trap careless borrowers who think there is no better way to get discounts that using a specific credit card. But, they often forget that these credit cards come with very high fees, which is to compensate for lower interest.

That’s exactly another reason behind the fact that more people are now in credit card debt. Since people are no longer interested in high-rate credit cards, companies have to charge a lower interest rate. But, they make up for this lower interest rate by charging higher fees. In fact, it is found that more than 10% of lender’s revenues come from penalties. Late fees, for instance, are extremely high, which are now more than $33.64. When people get one such credit card where interest is low and penalties are high, they often end up getting into card debt. It is so because many people sometimes find it hard to make timely payment, and that’s the point when they start creating problems for them.

These are few of the most important reasons why people get into debt. But, they can always find a solution to deal with this problem. For instance, consolidation is a great solution to these types of problems. Although people consolidate credit card bills when interest is high, you can still make use of it to avoid facing high late fees. So, just connect to the internet to find a right site and consult with a professional to see what you can do to get out of debt fast.