When you are deeply in debt, everyday your mailbox is full of final notices. And each time you answer your home phone, it is another bill collector on the other end of the line. It isn't a pleasant situation.

It is important to understand the kind of debt that your problem consists of first. If the total of the minimum payments that you are required to make each month on your unsecured debt (think credit cards) exceeds 20% of your net income, then there are free debt management programs that can help you.

However, if the debt that you are drowning in is made of secured loans (mortgage payments, car loan payments, or monthly installment payments for furniture or appliances), then the free debt management and credit counseling services cannot help you and neither can the for-profit credit counseling and debt management services.

The free credit counseling services like CCCS (Consumer Credit Counseling Service and MMI (Money Management International) are nonprofit organizations. The services are free and you will not be charged a monthly service fee, nor will there be any charge for the counseling services.

Everybody has some debt. Nobody is ever really completely debt-free. Even older people who own their own homes and drive old cars still have some debt, like insurance premiums and utility bills.

Debt is a fact of life, but managing debt so that you control it and not the debt controlling you is the object of the free debt management and credit counseling services.

Please be aware that when you seek credit counseling and enter into a debt management agreement with the free credit counseling services, all of your credit accounts will be closed. You cannot charge anything else to those accounts, and you cannot open any new credit accounts until you have cleared your outstanding debt.

Tags: personal debt relief, personal financial problems, financial problems, foreclosure, credit card debt, manage debt, credit repair

Before credit cards came into existence (and, yes, there was a world without credit cards at one time) it was a lot more difficult for people to get in over their heads financially. It happened, of course, but not with nearly the frequency that it happens in the credit card laden world of today.

People really didn't have the ability in the form of a credit card to get so deeply in debt that they couldnt get out. Loans had to be approved by other living people. Credit histories were checked and employment was verified before credit was extended.

Credit cards have made getting credit very, very easy, and that easy credit is getting a lot of people into serious financial difficulty. If a person has a social security number, they can get a credit card. In fact, I'm not certain that even a social security number is necessary — maybe just a mailing address works. A man in California got a credit card for his dog and used nine zeros as a social security number.

Having a credit card is not a badge of honor. It doesn't assure the world that a person is financially responsible and that they pay their debts on time and in full each month.

Managing debt means being financially responsible. We live in a world where instant gratification is the expected norm. See it, want it, buy it…with a credit card. The problem is that it wasn't bought; it was charged, and the bill will come due. Buy it now, worry about paying for it later seems to be the mantra of the nation today.

Credit cards are the vehicle that is used to drive into deep and unrelenting debt. That easy credit is the root cause of second, third, and final notices filling mailboxes, and it provides jobs for debt collectors who will be calling day and night.

Tags: consolidate your debt, personal financial problems, personal loans, managing personal debt, mortgage, good debt management, managing mortgage

Planning for debt is one of the most important aspects of sound overall financial planning. A debt agreement should never be entered into lightly and certainly not before plenty of thought has been put into it.

Most of the time, people will consider taking on major debt fairly carefully. There are even some safeguards in place to assure that is the case.

For example, before you are granted a mortgage to purchase a home, your financial situation is investigated. The lending institution ascertains that your income is stable and that you have the wherewithal to make the mortgage payments. Before you can get a loan to buy a car, a motorcycle, or a boat, the lending institution will do a credit check to be sure that you can afford it.

For all major purchases that you make through lending institutions for which you will supply collateral and sign contracts, the safeguard for the lending institution as well as for you is that your financial situation is assessed by people who are experts in the field of credit.

Credit cards are, however, a different animal. Some people do not view credit cards as loans or as part of their overall debt management program, and that is what gets a lot of them into financial hot water.

Credit cards ARE loans…they are debts. Granted, they are unsecured debt, but they are debt nevertheless.

Anybody who has any means of income whatsoever can have a credit card issued to them. There is no safety net. Your credit isn't checked to ascertain that you can afford to carry as much debt as your credit card limit extends.

When you are determining whether you can accept responsibility for repaying a debt, you need to remember that the balance on a credit card is a debt. The monthly minimum payment is not the debt.

Tags: credit rating, managing mortgage, debt relief, credit score, , consolidate your debt, personal financial problems