Learn the various Texas debt relief methods
June 18th, 2008
Hello my name is Steve Rendar and I’ve been assisting consumers that are in arrears with their unsecured credit card debts for a considerable amount of time and know the effect it has on people’s lives. When you have credit card debt and believe that this matter is no longer in your hands, you need to make a decision and make it fast. You should not wait until it is too late. As many of you must already know is that the debt collectors are not very easy to deal with when you contact them with issues regarding you statement. It’s extremely fascinating the way it works because when you initially get the card they are the politest people on the phone. Then if you call them to dispute a past due or over limit charge and attempt to have it reversed enough trying to maintain payments with 10% or even the 7.9 % interest that they are charging on your credit cards. How are you suppose to afford the elevated payments now? It was bad enough to manage before the interest skyrocketed. This is why many Americans are seeking out other options such as credit card debt settlement vs. credit counseling, or bankruptcy. If you are not familiar with any of your options then I will offer you a little information on them.
Bankruptcy
Prior to 2005 bankruptcy was to be used for people who were experiencing severe money troubles. Unfortunately it was misused by far too many people who wanted to avoid paying their unsecured debts. They did not want to take responsibility for their misgivings. The credit card companies were sick and tired of this so they pushed to have the bankruptcy legislation changed. It is now known as the Bankruptcy Abuse Prevention and Consumer Protection act of 2005. This would make it more difficult for many consumers to file for bankruptcy. Bankruptcy should only be considered as your very last choice after you have tried every conceivable option. Also you should contemplate the negative aftereffects that might come back later down the road. You would have to locate a lawyer, go to court and that could cost you a lot of money. There is also the problem of it being on your FICO report for a long time. When you sign any important application or document you will always have to answer yes when asked the question about bankruptcy, so this does have a extremely long lasting effect on your credit.
Texas Debt Consolidation Credit Counseling
In each direction you look, either it is advertised on the radio or television, you will hear about credit counseling. A credit counseling organization will attempt to get the credit card companies to reduce the APR on your credit accounts. You then make one monthly payment to the consumer credit counseling organization and they then pay each one of your creditors for you. The down fall to this method is even though they reduce your interest charge on your credit card balances you very well may still pay back as much as 120% of what you currently owe.
This is because on this kind of plan you will still be paying back what the full original balance was plus some of the interest for around 4 to 7 years. Almost 80% of the debtors that are in credit counseling don’t complete the program for one reason or another. Another draw back to credit counseling is that if you have a cash flow problem and are miss your monthly payment they will boot you off of the program immediately. They will also bump up your interest back up and the creditor could keep you off the program for around one year and on some occasions even longer. This might 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 option where you can save the largest amount of money. A competent debt settlement company will save you at least 40% of what you owe. The 40% should cover all of their fees. Similar to consumer credit counseling, you will hear a lot of radio and television advertisements very frequently. These companies are opening up all across the United States. Some of these companies try to make it sound like they have a magical stick and are going to make all your debt vanish overnight.
There are also many companies that try to use religion to gain the trust of people. Whatever company you are going with it is your responsibility to due diligence on them. You should begin with the BBB (Better Business bureau). You might be able to discover quite a bit about a company from the Better Business Bureau. If you discover that a company has only been in settling debts for a short time and has a slew of complaints towards them, then you must avoid them. Another thing to keep an eye out for is how long has the company been around. Some companies only survive one or two years before they go out of business or get caught stealing people’s hard earned dollars. Then some of them only stick around to make as much money as they can and close shop just to open up across townmorning.
One of the best states to perform debt settlement is in texas. Texas debt settlement allows the debtor the best protection under their states legislation
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