There are different forms of debt. ‘Unsecured debt’ is debt that is independent of property (say-credit card debt), unlike a secured debt (say-a mortgage), which grants the creditor the right to secure your property to satisfy your obligations, in case you default. In the case of unsecured debt, the only remedy the creditor has is to sue you and obtain a judgment. If what you have is unsecured debt, bill consolidation can help you get your bills under control, or a bill workout can help you eliminate your debt. If you choose to go with bill consolidation, you may find that, between the interest on the loan or the ‘points’ you pay, the cost of consolidation loans adds up. If you choose to go with a bill workout, you may elect to retain a professional’s services.
What’s the difference between bill consolidation, and bill workout?
Bill consolidation means that you reorganize your debt. You may have the assistance of a credit counselor, or you may take a bill consolidation loan, but you intend to pay your debts to your creditors in full. A debt workout, however, is a negotiated settlement of your credit card debt, in which you may agree with creditors that you’ll only pay a percentage of the debt. As just an example, you may come to an agreement with the credit card company to which you owe $10,000, that you’ll pay only $4,000.
Is this the kind of settlement I can negotiate for myself, or do I need to hire a debt reduction professional?
Bill consolidation is the process by which you take all your bills, pay them off with a loan then repay the loan company. A client talks to the bill consolidation representative and gives them information on all of the debt they want to consolidate. The representative then pays off this debt and issues the client a promissory note indicating that now the client owes them. The note is now the combination of all of the bills that the agency paid off broken down into monthly payments. The client now only has one place to pay.
How can bill consolidation help you?
When a client consolidates his or her bills they in turn obtain a loan that is big enough to pay off their debt but carries a payment that still fits their budget. The client has consolidated his or her bills into one payment. This helps the client because now instead of paying a lot of different places they can now only make one payment. This takes away the payment of bills throughout the month as well as the monthly record keeping of addresses and creditors.
Bill consolidation also helps the client by have a positive record on their credit report. By consolidating their bills the client then would show that the bills have been paid because the creditor no longer has them as a debt they can collect from in their records. The client now only owes one company but their credit report will show a favorable entry due to the payoff of the rest of the creditors. Also when the client starts to pay the bill consolidation company, the company will begin to report them as paying on time and this will increase their credit rating. The increase in credit rating will help the client obtain better loans, credit cards, lines of credit, and terms in the future.
