Advetorial
When you are struggling with debt, it is often easy to lose track of things and find your situation becoming increasingly worse. Many people get so nervous about their situation that they decide to bury their head in the sand and hope that it goes away. Of course, this doesn’t happen and before long court threats and creditor letters start arriving. This creates even more stress and the cycle continues.
If you want to deal with your debts the sensible way, you need to face the problem head on and look at the various options that are available to you. By doing this, you can determine the most suitable course of action for your circumstances and get on the right path to a happier and less financially stressful life.
What is the answer?
You can access debt relief in a variety of different ways depending on your personal situation and circumstances. If you are dealing with a variety of different creditors, one option is to contact each of them individually to see if you can come to an informal arrangement to reduce the amount you pay and extend the term of the loan. This will help to ease things in the short term if you are struggling to make ends meet as a result of your debt levels.
Another thing you can do is seek advice from debt experts who may be able to get you on a debt management plan. As part of the plan, they will work out how much you can comfortably afford to pay each month and still have money left over for your essential costs. You will then make one single payment for that amount each month and this will be disbursed to your creditors by the debt management company. Often, creditors will freeze the interest on the debt as part of this process.
You may be able to consider consolidation if you have a decent credit score. When you consolidate your debts, you basically take out one low rate loan to pay off the other high interest loans that you currently have. There are two key benefits of doing this. The first is that you will only have to deal with one loan and one creditor rather than a whole bunch of them, which makes financial management and budgeting easier. Second, you can reduce the amount you are paying out each month on your debts by finding a low rate loan and taking it out over a suitable repayment period.
Of course, as a last resort you can consider bankruptcy, but this is a decision that you should not take likely and is generally used in extreme circumstances. Having said that, bankruptcy no longer has the same stigma attached to it as it once did so people these days to not feel ashamed about admitting they messed up financially and have had to start again from scratch. This is far better than the alternative, which is drowning in debt for years to come.
