How am I going to get out of the debt mess?
This is a very common question that those who have more bills than money coming in to pay them. They also have no blessed idea how they are going to get themselves out of the financial mess that they are in. This is when many of these people will start thinking about filing for bankruptcy, debt consolidation or possibly debt settlement to start to get their finances back under control and in some semblance of order so that you can start to breathe again. The problem that comes in here is deciding which of these routes that you are going to take.
Many people think that bankruptcy will be the answer to all of their debt problems; but this is far from the case. While bankruptcy may clear you from having to pay off the creditors that need to be paid, it does not solve the problem entirely. You will have to deal with the bankruptcy ruling being on your credit reports for the next seven (7) years after the case has been finalized; and this does not pay off the creditors at all! This is part of why creditors would rather work with you to pay down those debts rather than see you file for bankruptcy and never get paid the money that is owed them.
If you are considering working with a debt settlement company, there are many different things that you really need to know before you even start the process. One of these things that you need to know is that you cannot legally work with a debt settlement company if you are a resident of Arizona, Hawaii, Georgia, Mississippi, Maine, New York, New Jersey, Louisiana, New Mexico, North Dakota, Wyoming, Maine or West Virginia. The debt settlement companies/agencies have been outlawed in these states due to their unfair and often illegal business practices.
There is something else that you really need to think about when it comes to this matter; and that is how this will affect your credit. If you are behind on your payments by one or two payments, you are not going to be able to work this matter out using a debt settlement process. That usually will not work until you are more than six months behind on your bills; by which time your credit has already been damaged (sometimes beyond repair by that point).
Think about this as well if you will; when you sign the service contract to work with any debt settlement companies, your debts are not getting paid. You will need to start saving up the money to pay the service fees that the debt settlement company is asking of you to pay first. Yes, you heard that correctly. You have to pay the debt settlement company’s service fees first, before your debt amount ever gets paid down. This, along with the service fees that these debt settlement companies charge, is a good part of what got them outlawed in the twelve states spoken of two paragraphs up.
