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The Truth About Debt Consolidation And Consumer Credit Counseling

The Truth About Debt Consolidation and Consumer Credit Counseling
Many of us are in the dark about debt consolidation and consumer credit counseling. Because as much as there is talk about everyone's credit being bad, the truth is that most people will have no need to use debt consolidation and consumer credit counseling.

This article intends to focus on ways to stay out of credit troubles and the right times to use debt consolidation and consumer credit counseling.

Stay Out Of Credit Card Debt

There are many kinds of debt out there, and the worst one for anyone to get into is credit card debt. There are a lot of people out there with significant credit card debt. With bills piled up high and interest and finance charges more than your minimum payment every month, it can look like you will never get out of it. But there are answers out there.

Of course the simplest solution is to pay off your balances every month. This is a preventative measure, assuring that you'll never get into credit card debt. But this is not possible for everybody. So, what else can you do? What if you are already in debt and can't pay off what you owe any time soon?

This is where people look to debt consolidation and consumer c Aredit counseling.

Debt Consolidation and Consumer Credit Counseling: The Debt Consolidation Loan

A solution many people look to is a credit card consolidation loan. A credit card consolidation loan can help you to consolidate the outstanding debts on your current (high-interest) credit cards to one with a lower interest rate and lower payment.

Here is how a credit card consolidation loan works:

Let's say that you have an outstanding balance of $10,000 in credit card debt. Now, let's say that the annual percentage rate is 20%. If the outstanding balance stays at $10,000, then you will pay $2,000 in interest charges. Here is how that works out:

10,000
* .20
------------
2,000

This doesn't even include the finance charges that you are likely to incur during that period.

But let's say that you take out a credit card consolidation loan. You can convert those high-interest credit card payments into a single loan with a lower interest rate. So, let's once again say that you have $10,000 in outstanding credit card debt. You take that and convert it into a credit card consolidation loan with a 9% interest rate. Let's se what that comes out to:

10,000
* .09
-------
900

This is an annual savings of $1,100 in interest charges.

2,000
- 900
------
1,100

And if you put that savings towards to principal of your debt, you can pay it off even faster. This makes a credit card consolidation loan desirable for many people.