Is debt consolidation a good way to get out of credit card debt?

February 1st, 2010 |

During this economic turmoil, credit card debt continues to cause serious pain to many Americans. Weak job market and rise of unemployment that is at its peak in past 26 years of Americans history added to the issue. Credit card debt is main cause of financial hardship for millions of Americans. During such hardship, many are seeking out and are in need of solutions to credit card debt.

Debt consolidation is a debt relief program that is most widely used among other alternatives like debt settlement, credit counselling, debt management and bankruptcy. It is a process where all your existing debt is paid off with the proceeds of debt consolidation loan. As multiple creditors existing will be paid off, you only need to pay one single payment towards the debt consolidation.

One will get better relief with debt repayments with debt consolidation because the payments you will pay towards the debt consolidation is smaller than the previous sum of payments you were to pay. This can be achieved with lower rate of interest on your new debt consolidation loan. For example: if you were to have $25,000 on five different credit cards with an average rate of interest is 25 percent. With rate of interest, you need to pay $525 as a minimum payment in order to stay current on your debt which will obviously take 20 years to pay off that debt with amount you pay rounding to $120,000.

To avoid such case, many suggest you to take debt consolidation loan of $25,000 to pay off all small lenders at once and pay the debt consolidation loan monthly at much lower rate of interest say 12 percent. It will take six years to clear the debt and pay around $34,000 by the time you clear the debt. Does all this sound great? Yes definitely.

But many people fail to understand who will lend you at that lower rate of interest for unsecured debt. In this case, there are huge chances that you will not manage to find money to pay off the smaller debt. In this situation, one can manage to achieve lower rate of interest only when you have good credit score or use of your home as collateral for debt consolidation loan. But one must be aware of the fact that having home collateral to consolidation loan means you are choosing a secured loan to repay unsecured credit card debt.

Choosing the debt consolidation loan against home means you are risking your home for sake of unsecured debt. It means if you run into trouble after taking consolidation loan against home and have difficulty paying for the new loan, then the situation could lead to foreclosure of your home. This is considered as a bad idea to pay off unsecured debt like credit card debt, medical bills etc by borrowing against property.

Therefore, taking a decision wisely related to debt consolidation by consulting a reliable debt consolidation firm will definitely help you in getting out of debt.

Articles on this site have been acquired from a variety of sources. No content on this site should be considered financial or legal advice.

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