Has anyone ever used a credit card consolidation company and FINISHED paying off their debt?
Corona asked: The pros and cons about using them thanks.
Kelly
Tags: Consolidation Company, Credit Card Consolidation, Credit Consolidation
This entry was posted
on Wednesday, June 17th, 2009 at 5:07 pm and is filed under Debt Consolidation.
You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed.
Both comments and pings are currently closed.
June 19th, 2009 at 5:32 am
Victoria
I wouldn’t touch them with a ten foot pole! Consolidating all your debt into one monthly payment may sound like a good idea, but you will not get out of debt quicker.
For example, you transferred $20,000 of other debt to a zero-percent card and paid $1,000 on it by the time the rate jumped to 14 percent. If you make only the minimum monthly payments, it will take you 1,134 months — or 94.5 years — to erase your remaining $19,000 balance. If you live that long, you’ll pay $64,805 in interest. And that’s presuming you don’t charge another thing during that time.
You are better off with a debt “counseling” agency, there are some that the FTC recommends and many will waive their small fees if you qualify. Here is a link to locate one near you.
Govt approved credit counseling agencies.
Hope this answers your question
June 21st, 2009 at 5:02 am
Darryl
Pros include you saving yourself a very bad credit rating. A poor credit score can affect your application for cars, mortgages, some jobs.
Con’s include if you plan on getting in more debt before you pay off this debt; then you have just gotten back into the same tough spot.
This method is good if your plan it to get this debt cleared up before getting into more debt… Is that your intent? If so, yes, this is good as they will pay off for you & you have one payment to clean up quicker with less interest.
No, if you are going to get into more debt before this is solved.
June 24th, 2009 at 4:14 am
Katherine
You don’t need to incur the extra expense of hiring a debt management/consolidation company to settle your delinquent accounts. It makes a lot more sense to use your money to pay your creditors directly, than to pay someone else to do it for you. Your creditors will not make any concessions to them, in fact they would much rather work directly with you.
What you need to do is simply to call each of your creditors and negotiate a payment plan.
Here is some general information that will be helpful. If the account is still at the bank or collection agency (and you will have to differentiate between an agency, which collects for the bank and is accountable to the bank, and a debt buyer, which collects for itself) level, you should be able to settle it for 80% - 90%. They won’t accept anything lower than that. If the account is at a debt buyer, you should be able to settle it quickly. Keep in mind that if they had just bought the account within the past month or two, they will not accept anything lower that 60% - 70% of the total amount as a settlement. If they’ve had the account for 3 - 6 months, they will accept a lower settlement, probably you can get it down to 50%, maybe even lower than that. Also, chances are that after 6 - 7 months, they will sell the account to another debt buyer. Make sure, when you settle, to get from them a “paid in full” letter, which you will have to send to the credit bureaus to update your credit history.
That is all there is to it. You are much better off using your money to pay off your accounts than to pay someone else to do it for you.
Good luck!
June 26th, 2009 at 12:05 pm
Joseph
Credit card debt consolidation adds up all your unpaid balances and converts them into a single payment. This payment is far lesser than each of the individual payments.
When you finalize a plan with a debt consolidation company, the company repays your dues to your creditors. Then you make a single payment to the consolidation company every month. Your average new interest rate is much below the old interest rate.
All credit card debt consolidation loans include some type of credit card and debt counseling. You have to trim your lifestyle to eliminate unnecessary expenses. This will allow you to set your house in order. But this necessary, as the ultimate goal of debt consolidation is to help you out of debt, while keeping your home.