If you can't afford to just double or triple your monthly payments to pay it back, then two of the
most common choices are credit counseling and debt negotiation or more commonly known as debt
settlement.
Credit counseling is most beneficial for people with normally less debt, like around $3,000- 5,000.
Since credit counseling companies only negotiate the interest rate on your accounts, they don't negotiate
the debt amount your payments can be about the same or higher then your current monthly minimums.
The programs are on average 4 to 6 years long and sometimes longer, because they only negotiate the
interest rate on your account. You make one monthly payment to them and they re-disburse that payment
each month to one of your creditors for you.
The problems with credit counseling are that they report directly to the credit bureaus that you are
in that program and that reads as a "third party assistants" and that can be seen almost as bad as a
charge off. Because you still have all the debt and the third party assistance listed.
But credit counseling can be beneficial when you have less debt because they can set you up an
affordable monthly payment and a short enough term that makes sense.
Now if you have over $10,000 in unsecured debt, debt arbitration or debt settlement might be a better
option. They negotiate your debt amount down 40-60% and get your creditors to agree to a settlement
amount to cover your debt.
You make one monthly payment into a "settlement account" and then as the money builds up they settle
with one of your creditors, then the money builds up again and they settle with the next creditor, and so
on and so forth until all your creditors in the program are paid off.
The draw backs are the short term negative affects on you credit and if you have assets over a certain
amount and choose to use debt settlement you might have to pay additional taxes.
But the debts get paid off, your credit can repair and most people who use debt settlement don't have
assets, so the positives out weight the negatives.
Debt settlement is not for everyone, you need to be in a hardship and struggling with your debt, it
needs to be creditors that the company works with and your need to be able to afford the monthly
payment.
You can be debt free in under 36 months, normally the longest debt settlement program in 3 years
long.
