Well, let’s take a look. Credit counseling is when you use a company to manage payment of your consumer debt for a prescribed period of time – typically 3-5 years. In this article we’ll review the pros and cons of credit counseling to help you see if it right for you. Pros of Consumer Credit Counseling      Pro 1 – “Re-Rating” your delinquent accounts. If you enter into a credit counseling program with delinquencies already on your credit report, it is possible after a period of time to have those accounts “re-rated.” The credit counseling company can negotiate with your creditor to get the creditor to agree to “re-rate” or “re-age” or “cure” your account once they have received a pre-determined number of on time payments. Once you have made these payments, the creditor will note on your account that you are now paying them as agreed. You want your credit accounts to get “re-rated” as quickly as possible. This process is a “line in the sand” from being delinquent to having good credit again. The more on time payments you can show on your report the better and the quicker your credit bounces back.      Pro 2 – Simplified payments. Generally, you wouldn’t enter into a credit counseling program if you only had one credit account that you wanted to manage. Most of the credit reports that I have seen where my customer was in credit counseling had more than 5 credit accounts in the program. With so many payments to worry about, it’s no wonder why some payments get missed, etc. In a credit counseling program, you typically make one payment to the counseling company and they in turn pay your creditors.      Pro 3 – Chances are if you had any delinquencies with your credit cards you are likely to be paying an interest rate greater than 20% on them. Creditors are more likely to reduce your interest rate if they know you are in a counseling program. They might not even charge you interest so that you can pay your debt to them. This will allow you to pay them off more quickly.

How do I know if I should do debt settlement or debt mediation? Financial troubles are now facing millions of Americans due to the credit crisis. Many Americans will have to make hard decisions about their personal debt. Unfortunately there are not many great choices you can make when you are in debt. You can choose from debt consolidation, cccs, debt settlement, debt negotiation, consumer credit counseling or bankruptcy. Each choice has its advantages or disadvantages.

Is debt consolidation like doing a chapter 13 bankruptcy? Continue Reading »