Enlighten yourself on why a large percentage of credit counseling programs fail!

This brief writing will enlighten you to some of the problems with online consumer credit counseling programs. These are the issues that turn in a drop off rate of in some cases over 80% of the people who enroll themselves in these programs. Debtors should be knowledgable of these facts before they get themselves into a online consumer credit counseling program to ensure themselves they are making a beneficial financial decision.

1. The vast majority of the credit counseling firms are created and funded by the actual credit card issuers themselves. They are somewhat of a middle man for the credit card company to collect the debt amount owed.

2. The credit counseling firms work for and represent the credit card issuers; they do not work on behalf of the client. The credit card companies orderto the credit counseling company the minimum payment requirement, and the interest rate. There is no give and take at all on this.

3. The credit counseling companies will reduce the interest rate, however they can never actually reduce the original balance. The normal interest rate on one of these programs is around 10% which is more in the middle than actually being a low interest rate. By not reducing the original balance they aren’t truly a method of debt relief, this is just an sped up repayment program.

4. You will wind up actually putting out more than the original debt amount, due to the monthly fees, interest and lowered monthly payments which drastically extends the amount of time you are going to be trapped in debt.

5. It can have a temporary derogatory impact on your FICO credit rating and is made a public record on your credit report, during the time you are in the program.

6. Attaining a mortgage while on a credit counseling program becomes extremely complex, on the edge of being impossible.

7. Here is the biggest reason debtors fail and read extremely carefully. If you drop behind only one payment while on a online consumer credit counseling program you will be booted off and the creditors will not allow you to get back into another program for a year. Placing your credit card debts to where they were prior to enrolling into the program, high interest and all. This is the number one reason why upwards of 75% of the people enrolled in these programs fail out.

I mean think about it for a minute. They place you into a online consumer credit counseling program that may take 5 years or more. As everyone knows or will come to know the adventure that is life has its ups and downs. If you find it very tight to be on the program in the first place you will drop off. Any unpredictable financial problems as little or large as they may be might contribute to you missing just one payment and getting the boot from the program. You need to very seriously think about how constant your finances and income security are before enrolling into a credit counseling program to evade being part of that 80%. The bottom line is those with a considerable sum of debt such as $20,000 or more should really lean more towards credit card debt settlement than credit counseling. Credit counseling is much more viable for debtors with much lower amounts of debt that do not have much of any quarles keeping up with their bills in the first place. If you are looking to reduce your debt and get out of debt in a timely fashion, then credit counseling is not the avenue for you to take.

Steve Bis is a credit card debt analyst with the US Consumer Advocate, which practices in credit card debt reduction.

- Steve Bis


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