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Eliminate Debt Today

It's now the time of year for rejuvenation on all aspects of your life, including your financial situation. What if you could breathe new life into your finances by starting over, and becoming debt free by next spring?

Most of us vow to make changes in our lives with our new-year's resolutions. We all have the best of intentions; lose weight, stop smoking, get a better job, etc. Very few of us carry through on any of those resolutions. Two days after making those resolutions, the realities of January kick in as the weather is cold, skies are gray, we work all day, and there is a whole month left before many of us gets paid again.

Springtime however can be different. This should be the time to make those resolutions. As the weather warms up, flowers begin to bloom, leaves return to the trees, and the birds begin to sing. Springtime! A time of re-birth, rejuvenation, and resurrection. It's a time to start over. Summer is just around the corner. This means picnics, festivals, and of course, summer vacation.

We think differently in spring than in the dead of winter. Our minds are more open to new possibilities. Can we just start over?

Well what if we could get a "do-over" on our financial lives? Before you can begin building up the numbers in your bank account, you must first "get up to zero". In other words, get out of debt. You must get rid of the negative, before you can start building the positive.

The struggle with debt is nothing new. But the recent credit crunch has put our debt woes into the national spotlight. Not too long ago, we felt it was all right to be in debt. After all, we could just refinance the house again, and pay off the bills. This was a way of "starting over". Unfortunately, we started over with a new 30-year mortgage. That lifeboat now has a big hole in it.

We now need to think differently about our debt. Springtime is a great time to think differently. Change our mindset about debt. Open up to the possibilities of getting out of debt, or succumb to the possibility that we will drown in it.

This is especially true with credit card debt. After all, you don't go through a long process of paperwork and approvals to get deeper into credit card debt. You just drive to the store and buy something. Then that "something" you bought costs you even more with interest rates that rise at the whim of the bank.

This spring, begin to think differently about your credit card use. Do you really need a credit card to buy lunch, those new shoes, that morning coffee, or your weekly groceries? Re-discover the beauty of cash. If you don't want to carry around so much cash for your daily expenses, then maybe you're daily expenses are too high. If you can't afford to pay for it now, then don't buy it now. Period!

When you resolve to use cash, you will begin to hate all those trips to the ATM to re-stock your wallet. But you will gain an understanding of the money you are spending.

Spring into action to control your debt. When you start over in the way you think about and use your cards, you can then start over with your means to eliminate your debt. This new season, open your mind to the possibilities of living without those plastic cards. Then open up your mind to the means to eliminate them completely.

Bad Credit Debt Consolidation

For many of us, getting into debt becomes a big merry-go-round of more and more debt. The more debt you have the more debt you seem to attract to you. In many cases this is due to the fact that you can no longer plan your financial life.

For the employed amongst us, this usually results in 'robbing Peter to pay Paul'. You borrow from this source to pay that loan, with the net result being that nothing actually improves; apart from perhaps you may be buying a few weeks grace.

For the self-employed, you lose the ability to plan the best use of your resources, with the end result being your potential future income will start to drop and you find it more and more impossible to plan your future.

There are a number of debt counselling organisations you could turn to, but be careful here. The last thing you want to do is to start spending money you haven't got, and better advice would be to either go and see your bank manager, or look at what you may be able to do by yourself.

A couple of ideas you may not have thought about. Most creditors, being businessmen, do not like taking legal action against anyone, or hound them. They are mostly all negotiators, so the first line of attack is to approach every one of your creditors, and see if they will accept special terms at least for a shorter period. This is especially the case if you have fallen behind due to circumstances beyond your control - a major illness, divorce, losing your job, or perhaps something more drastic like Identity Fraud, or some fraudulent actions towards you. If it is because you have been extremely reckless with your spending, you had better cut up your credit cards...

Creditors (well, responsible ones) will not force you into bankruptcy. Why? Because it would cost them money and unless you have masses of assets, they will get nothing. If they can help you back into a better income generating situation, everybody gains!

If that does not do the trick, although you can not easily reduce the actual amount you owe, there are a number of ways that can at least reduce your monthly repayments.

So, if you have read this far, you are probably very serious in getting out of your present situation. It takes guts - believe me - I have been there and dug my way out!

Start by speaking to reputable debt consolidation companies - use your bank or people you know who can recommend one to you. Their small monthly fees are nothing to the reductions in your monthly outgoings.

Your bank may even offer a low interest consolidation loan, or may even advise you to take out a loan against your property ( but only do that with advice - your home may be at risk if you can not meet repayments), but it can in many cases be a very low cost loan.

Whatever you do try to remove the reason why you got into this situation in the first place. Think about using cash as opposed to plastic - it can be a great feeling to pull fresh notes form your wallet , and a great boost to your self esteem!

Credit Rating Recovery After Debt Consolidation

When your finances have got out of hand and you've decided to restructure them with a debt consolidation loan, it's usually recommended that you subsequently cancel all of your paid-off credit cards and close off your other lines of credit that have been repaid as part of the consolidation process. The reasoning behind this is that you need to remove the temptation to build up new unsecured debts on top of your new consolidation loan, leaving you in a worse position than ever.

This is indeed good advice in general, but you may be surprised to hear that in certain circumstances this might not be the ideal way to proceed. If, before consolidation, your finances were in such a state that your credit record became littered with missed and late payments, then closing off your credit lines will actually increase the length of time it takes to recover your previously high level of creditworthiness.

The reason for this is simple: under the UK credit reference system, whenever you close an account, its details are frozen on your file for a period of six years before being deleted. This means that the damage done by your late payments will still impact on your credit rating for all that time, even though you've completely satisfied the debt and seemingly put things right.

In contrast, open accounts record their data on a rolling system, where entries which reach the age of three years drop off your file, It's plain to see that keeping your account open will halve the time it takes for your adverse credit information to be removed from your record, and so your credit rating will be restored correspondingly more rapidly than if you'd followed conventional wisdom and closed off your unused credit lines.

Of course, as with all things financial, things aren't as simple as that. If your credit file shows that you already have access to a large amount of unused credit, this is in itself usually taken as a warning sign by potential lenders, and may reduce your ability to get credit - for example, you might find it more difficult to negotiate a new mortgage at a good rate during the three years it takes to restore your rating fully.

It really is a balancing act, but if you're happy to sit out the three year period, this is the quickest way to restore your credit rating, so long as all defaults have been satisfied and other black marks removed whenever possible.

In any event, the spirit of the conventional advice still holds: there's little point in going through the debt consolidation process if you then immediately start racking up new debts on your old cards and overdrafts etcetera. Even if you decide to keep your accounts open in the interests of speedier credit repair, then at least make it as difficult as possible for you to succumb to temptation. Physically destroy your credit cards so that you can't use them, and store your account details in a safe place where it will take some effort to retrieve them so that you can't use them on impulse without at least taking a moment's pause for thought.