How Do I Know When I Should Choose Debt Settlement?

     There comes a time in everyone's life when you gotta say - enough is enough. Same thing goes when it comes to you letting your debt dominate your qualify of life. Here are some signs that it might be time to finally pick up the phone and take some action on getting out of debt, paying off your collectors and finally getting your life back.

• When the phone rings during dinner, or in the evening, or in the morning while I am getting ready for work and my gut says – “Do Not Answer The Phone It Is A Collector!”



• I answer the phone when my gut says don’t hoping that it is anyone else but a collector. And…it is a collector.



• I never save money because I live paycheck to paycheck. My savings account has nothing in it.



• I know that it will take me forever to pay off my credit cards because I only afford to make the minimum payment – that is provided of course that I still make payments on them at all.



• I have more than four or more major credit cards with balances on them. Major credit cards are cards such as VISA, MasterCard, American Express, Discover.



• I avoid looking at my credit card statements or other bills, to the point of being afraid to looking at them, until the very last possible moment – if I look at them at all.



• I buy life’s essentials like gas and groceries, and pay utility bills with my credit card, not for the purpose of getting frequent flyer miles but because I don’t have any money in the bank until payday.



• I write a check knowing that I don’t have the money to cover the check hoping that my direct deposit check will get to my bank account first.



• I lose sleep thinking about my debt.



• I take cash advances on my credit cards just to make ends meet in between paychecks.



• I have been embarrassed because I have been denied credit, or my credit card has been denied when I went to buy something.



• My total minimum credit card payment if I still have them because I haven’t let them go to collections yet is at least 20% of my overall gross monthly income. Gross monthly income is your income before taxes are taken out.



• I avoid telling the truth – I lie – about my spending habits to my spouse, significant other.



• In addition to the major credit cards that I have, I also have credit cards from department stores that have high balances on them – or they are maxed out already.



• I tend to sign up for more credit when there is an offer to save money if I get that department store’s credit card when I checkout.



• I bounce my credit card balances from one free interest card to another each time the grace period runs out, but I do not seem to pay off my credit cards at all.

     If you have any of or all of these thoughts in your head, you might be a candidate for some sort of debt reduction program like consumer credit counseling or debt settlement.

     Article by Debt Free Dave. Debt Free Dave has been in the mortgage and consumer finance business for over 10 years and has a blog at debtnegotiationzone.blogspot.com.  He has a Finance and Real Estate degree from the University of Arizona.