What Happens When You Go For Credit Counselling? Word Count: 535 Summary: You often get to hear about people with financial problems resorting to credit counselling services. However, people tend to confuse that these services help you in negotiating your debts or reach a settlement. In reality, credit counselling helps you gradually reduce your monthly payments in such a way that you are able to balance you debt to a value that is easily affordable. This article helps you in understanding the process to work with credit counselling. The best time ... Keywords: credit card debt settlement, consumer debt counseling, settle credit card debt Article Body: You often get to hear about people with financial problems resorting to credit counselling services. However, people tend to confuse that these services help you in negotiating your debts or reach a settlement. In reality, credit counselling helps you gradually reduce your monthly payments in such a way that you are able to balance you debt to a value that is easily affordable. This article helps you in understanding the process to work with credit counselling. The best time to look for the help of a credit counsellor is when your account is handed over to collection agencies and the bill collector’s start haunting you day and night. You must be very careful when deciding which credit counselling service to opt for. You must know that many of these services are set up just to make benefits and they cannot actually help you staying within the legal boundaries. For example, you must avoid credit counselling services that claim that they can fix your credit report in no time because this just not possible legally. You must try to choose credit-counselling services of agencies that are accredited by Consumer Credit Counselling Services. Credit counselling process: After you have selected a genuine credit counselling service to resort to, you must ensure that you provide them all necessary detail and information. Remember any information that you avoid telling them prevents them from properly handling your situation and can lead you to quite unpleasant surprises in future. After obtaining all the necessary information on your case, the counsellor will start working towards solving your problem. The counsellor will try to negotiate with your creditor to reschedule your payments in such a way that you are more comfortable in paying them. The counsellor may also try to get the minimum sum required for your monthly payments lowered. Many agencies also provide debt management systems to help you manage your credits. While working with these systems, you deposit a lump sum amount to your credit-counselling agency and allow them to handle your monthly payments. Such a system might take some burden off you and might promise you some peace of mind but is not fool proof. Even your credit-counselling agency can miss a payment that will badly reflect on your credit report. Therefore, it is always better that you manage your payments yourself. However, if you really want to opt for debt management system then check in to the history of the credit-counselling agency before making them in charge of handling your payments. Most of the serious and genuine credit-counselling agencies are free of cost. Therefore, to avoid yourself from getting in a fraud, you must avoid agencies that require you to make a large upfront payment. You must always opt for lower-risk and lower-cost services. Your opting for a credit-counselling agency might leave a bad mark on your credit report because it indicates that you are facing financial problems. However, while trying to recover from your mistakes on your own might lead you to more problems even bankruptcy. Therefore, if you have a problem with your credit card payments that you are not able to handle then in might be best if you allow a professional to help you.