Consumer Debt Counseling

 Defining Moment
Consumer Debt Counseling and Management companies may not have your best interests at heart. After all, you can call up credit card companies and try to get them to lower your interest rate yourself. If you are struggling to make your payments, most of the credit card companies are flexible because they do want you to keep making payments and not default. Instead of signing up with a credit debt counseling company you can do basically what they do.

Keep track of all your payments and pay the minimum payments or $10 more if possible. One thing about credit debt counseling companies are that when you send them payments in the beginning of the month, they dont pay it then but pay your credit cards at around the 25th of the month. Why would you want a company making payments for you if theyre going to do that?

And its a negative mark on your credit report when you enroll in a consumer debt counseling program. Its just a little bit better than bankruptcy. If you can make the payments yourself, dont buy into the you should join a consumer debt counseling program to help you pay off debt faster. It wont help you that much.

Also, if you miss just one payment, then the whole agreement between the consumer debt counseling company and the credit card companies are off. Your interest rates will go back up to where they were before if not higher.

Also, most of them charge at least $25 a month for their services. They also get paid by the credit card companies. Even though those consumer debt counseling companies are non-profit, they are still in business and they need to make money.

If you think about it, all they do is lower your interest rates and mail the payments to the credit card companies for you. Can you do that yourself? Learn more about consumer debt counseling before enrolling into their program.