Best Debt Companies - Advice On Finding Reputable And Reliable Debt Companies
You can, however, take encouragement from the fact that there are still plenty of excellent organisations out there who are trustworthy and reliable and some of the best debt companies have already helped thousands of people who were in exactly the same situation as you. It is relatively straightforward to sift out the best debt companies from the bad ones. You can do this quite easily by just making sure you have a good basic understanding of the options open to you, a knowledge of what you will be asking the debt companies to do and taking steps to avoid any contact with the less reputable organisations.
Before approaching any debt companies, it is best to have an understanding of the process that you will be going through, and what sort of service you will be asking the debt companies to provide for you. There are basically two main routes open to you, and the best one will depend on your circumstances. To get help from any sort of debt companies your debts must be fairly substantial, and you must be struggling to deal with them.
If you have a lot of debts, but still have a steady income and some money spare each month after covering you basic living costs, you should look for a debt management company. If your situation is more severe and you do not have much money spare to put towards such a plan, you will need to look for a debt settlement company if you are in the US, or an IVA provider if you are in the UK. In the UK IVAs are usually offered by the same companies that provide debt management, but in the US, debt settlement companies are often separate organisations to debt management companies.
Debt management companies will set up a debt management plan for you. These are known by various other names, and the process is often called debt consolidation in the US, but the main thing to understand is that they are different to debt settlement. With a debt management plan you just make a single affordable payment to the debt company, who distribute it among your creditors. The company will have negotiated with your creditors to change the arrangements for paying back what you owe. These changes normally involve paying less interest and other charges and make it more affordable for you to pay off the debt.
With debt settlement, you also stop paying your creditors, but this time you make a payment instead into another account. This money is saved up while the debt company negotiate with all your creditors with the intention of settling each debt for a greatly reduced amount. The idea is that creditors agree to write off a big part of the debt (frequently up to 60% or more) in exchange for paying back the rest in one go.
As mentioned earlier, debt settlement is a service used in the US, but in the UK you would use an IVA. This stands for individual voluntary arrangement and, like debt settlement, results in getting a large part of your debts written off at the end of the process. All the best debt companies will also help you with things like budgeting and money saving tips and advice.
That is a very rough overview of the main processes you will be asking debt companies to go through for you. This should help you when you come to approaching companies and agreeing what you require from them. The single most important thing you need to do next is ensure that you do not go anywhere near any company that you have any doubts about in terms of honesty, integrity or effectiveness.
You can do this by following researched recommendations for companies that are known to be very well established and ethical, with excellent track records. When you have a list that you know contains only the best debt companies, the safest approach is to apply to about three different ones, from which you can choose whichever you are happiest with.