how does the credit counseling work?
me and my husband is buried with credit card debt about $20,000 more or less and we are behind of everything so we thinking of credit counseling but we don't know how it works and we want to buy a house in 1 year, what we should do? please advise! can you tell us who are the good credit counseling agency. thank you.
Public Comments
- If you're behind on everything, and you owe $20K to credit card companies, you're not buying a house in a year. Credit counselors aren't worth the fees that they'll charge you. If you haven't done so already, cut up the cards and start living on less than you make. List your debts from smallest to largest. Pay only the minimum on everything but the smallest, and put as much as you can on that one. When it's paid off, roll that money into the next smallest, and so on. You do it this way because it's easier to see progress, which will hopefully keep you on track. The debt isn't the problem, its the symptom of a problem. Why are you using credit cards so much? Do you have an income problem, or do you simply lack the self control to put off owning things until you can pay for them with cash?
- Please be very careful while shopping for these people - there are approved credit counselors located on the federal trade commission web site - consider only these companies. I have seen consumers loose money to the scammers at hand - do not give money to someone else to make your payments, some of them don't make them and before you know it you are delinquent on your payments. Also try speaking to the creditors that you are behind with and see if they will work with you - If any of them have been turned over to collections, you need to dispute the original debt as being transferred or sold so that it is not reporting twice. Also - watch for collection agencies that will report twice the only difference will be one dollar of the debt and the account number will be one digit different - you can dispute these with the credit reporting agencies as duplicates. Please be careful - start with the federal trade commission first.
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