Saturday, January 17, 2009

Idiots Guide to Debt Fixing

By: keshavlaxmi
Bad choices lead to bad circumstances that you have to ultimately face. When you are young, you feel like pursuing a financial option in the belief that you can easily clear any debts over time. You presumed you can deal with second mortgage payments. You also presumed your credit card bills could be settled eventually. You were young and you thought you were invincible.

And just like any great idea that you had in your younger days, that idea was just plain foolish. Now, you are swimming in debts that you are even contemplating on dipping our sticky hands into your retirement plan by making a loan out of it.

Before you do that drastic and potentially fatal to your retirement move, here are some steps that you may want to consider to help you out on your debt problem.

- Obtain copies of your credit report form all three credit bureaus to compile all the loans that you have (You can check the validity of the details on the reports at the same time to help you boost your credit score). Not all creditors report to all credit companies so one bureau may have you at a comfortable 700 but another has you at a low 500. Compile all the data that you have in a spreadsheet in your computer to consolidate all the loans that you have. Include the amount, the company and the payment terms in your spreadsheet. Also file your loan letters, your credit statements, your loan agreement forms and all debt related files in one neat folder that you can separate per loan type.
- After you have compiled everything, segregate your list and highlight the loans that you HAVE to pay or you NEED to prioritize. These are the debts you would want to keep an eye on first, before the other loans that you have. Your mortgage payment, your gas/electricity/water dues and your late rent pay fall into this category. Also, anything related to income taxes should be included in this list. Then, for the loans that you know you must pay but they are not that urgent, create a separate sheet for them.
- Once you have all your data sorted out, check out your local college, military base or on line to find a non-profit institution that offers credit counseling to help you out on the data you have gathered. These agencies can help you sort through your files, help you understand them better and help you understand your alternatives. They can also guide you to a better spending mentality that can finally steer you to a better financial standing.
- After you collected the necessary inputs, make sure you have the commitment and the discipline to stick to it. you must implement the budget.
- Your counselor may recommend you find a debt management place, those people may put you on to a debt consolidating agency, or a debt settlement company.



About The Author:
Get information about emergency debt relief. Getting an insight into national debt relief initiative may help you

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