Debt relief servicing cannot do more for you than you can effectively do for yourself, if you truly want to rid yourself of debt. A reputable debt service organization can truly live up to its name -- a provider of debt relief solutions - if you choose one that’s reliable, honest, and well-intentioned.
"Always bear in mind that your own resolution to succeed
is more important than any one thing.”
- Abraham Lincoln |
Unfortunately, it’s the agencies that only want to make money off of your misfortunes that you have to watch out for. And too often these scam companies make up the majority of the organizations doing business today. The National Foundation for Credit Counseling (www.nfcc.org) can help you find a good, qualified debt relief servicing organization. A good agency doesn’t just want to get you on a Debt Management Plan and start collecting fees from you. A good one wants to counsel with you, educate you on debt reduction, and help you develop good spending habits. A good agency will have knowledge, advice, and support to offer you, at a low reasonable price, or no price at all. Debt relief servicing often leads to you being placed on a Debt Management Plan wherein you pay them one lump sum each month, and they distribute payments to all your creditors on your behalf. Your creditors, in turn, glad that you are on a DMP and making headway toward paying off what you owe them, often will waive some late fees and other penalties, and may even lower your interest rates. If you’ve been making your payments on time and aren’t over your limits, then you probably don’t need a debt relief servicing agent to put you on a path to financial fitness. You can do it yourself! Keep in mind, these organizations charge for their services, and if your accounts aren’t in arrears, then your creditors don’t really have any incentive to cut you any slack when you start on a DMP. So there’s no reason to pay for something you can do by yourself, right? However, if a debt relief servicing company is what you feel you need, make sure you’re not expecting miracles. Some companies claim they’ll repair your bad credit when it’s all over, often making very lofty claims in that respect. Do not be fooled! First of all, no one can “repair” your credit. The only way to have negative items stricken from your credit report is if they were placed there in error. Otherwise, poor credit information stays on your record from 7 to 10 years. Those are the facts, and anyone who tells you otherwise is trying to take advantage of you. More importantly, you don’t really need to have your credit repaired. You don’t need to boost your FICO score. What you need to do is pay off your debts and change your lifestyle so that you can stay out from under the thumb of the credit card companies. Ideally, it won’t matter what your FICO score is, because you’re not going to be using credit anymore, right? Let them have their crazy little number system that no one understands! Let the FICO Gods assign whatever score they want to you! You don’t care because you no longer make purchases on credit, right? It simply doesn’t matter, because you’re going to learn how to save money; how to boost your income, and how to pay for things with cash rather than credit. This is a goal worth achieving.
"Debt is like any other trap, easy enough to get into,
but hard enough to get out of."
- Henry Wheeler Shaw |
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Debt is NOT your friend. It's not a wonderful "tool" for building wealth. That's a myth.
