Your new advocate, a credit counseling agency, will contact each of your creditors and arrange for liberating lower payments, lower credit card interest rates, and in almost all cases, persuade them to waive fines and penalties.
Occasionally, even the actual debt can be lowered, but that is more difficult.
Achieving all of the creditor concessions cannot normally be done by you the debtor.
It is a powerful advantage for you to have an established agency negotiating for you.
The consumer credit counseling agencies deal daily with thousands of all types of creditors nationwide.
As a result these agencies are able to negotiate new terms that fit your needs.
All involved are working to bring about solutions that directly address your acute debt requirements.
No other organization of its kind has the clout or ability to help you the way that a credit counseling agency can.
This experience enables the credit counseling agency to ask for concessions that you would never know to request and has the industry reputation to get for you what they request.
This spells out a huge advantage for you in terms of short term relief and long term interest savings! Credit counseling agencies differ from debt settlement companies in that they generally try to help their clients through education, budget planning, and debt management programs before suggesting more radical methods like debt negotiation and bankruptcy.
They provide free education and budgeting classes.
Debt settlement companies usually require you to entrust your debt payments to them without training you for future financial success.
In the next article, "Eliminating Current Debt - Roll-Up Acceleration", you will learn the art of accelerating the payment of bills early.