Author: financenewstoday.com

Bills are piling up. You’ve tried everything from a debt consolidation loan to calling your creditors and begging for an extension. So, is credit counseling your only option? The government as now made it law that if you make the decision to file for bankruptcy, it is required that you have credit counseling. The government has come out with its first list of approved counselors. This means more customers and a way to get you to spend money for help to get out of debt. These days all it takes is about $2,500 and in about two weeks and agency can be up and running.

These agencies are getting more and more anxious to become part of the government’s

list of counselors. If you are looking to get out of debt, do not let the list fool you into thinking that it is the perfect way out. As of last year most of these agencies were not so good in the eyes of a senate committee who said that problems with customer service, outrageous fees, and basically leaving the person in more debt than they were before they acquired a counselor. Over $170 Million dollars in fines have been paid by some of the largest credit counseling agencies in the business for basically ripping off customers.

Counselors help people with their debt by charging up to 15% of their payments each month. Credit card companies pay the counselors a fee for doing this. Some would say that this is conflicting because the counselor’s incentive to help you is reduced. An easy way to fix this is just to do it yourself; you can bug the credit card companies just as easy as the counselor can. You can let them know that you are seriously thinking of switching cards could sway them to drop your interest rates a point or so. Make your payments on time and odds are they will drop more.

Start with by paying off your smallest debt first. Pour all your extra efforts into paying off your smallest bill first. Once you accomplish this, then take all the money you were paying on that bill and add it to the minimum payment you have been making on the next smallest bill. And continue this process until all your bills are paid off.

To see the rollover method in action, try our Accelerated Debt Payoff Calculator. This calculator allows you to see how much time and money you could save by paying off your debts using the "rollover" method. Using the rollover method, as each smaller debt is paid off, the freed-up payment amount is then applied to the next larger debt, and so on until all debts are paid off. As you are about to see, the rollover method can save you a ton of money in interest charges, and get you debt free in a very short period of time.

Success in personal finance doesn’t happen overnight but getting out of debt is the first big step to financial freedom.