What to do when debt gets you down - Tips from the pros

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Student Loan Forgiveness Programs for College Graduates
Student loans are often necessary to finance a college education. However, many graduates find it difficult to repay student loans after graduation.

While there is a grace period of six months before graduates must begin repaying loans, in today's job marketplace it may take longer to secure employment and often a new graduates begin at low salaries making it difficult to repay student ... Read debt consolidation article



Debt Settlement - All You Must Know
Debt Settlement companies work with your creditors to help you reduce your unsecured debts though arbitration and negations. The important thing to realize about Debt Settlement is that it is a different type of program than Consumer Credit Counseling or Debt Reduction. Traditionally, these types of programs work with your creditors to lower your interest rates. Debt Settlement companies work with... Read debt consolidation article



What to do when debt gets you down - Tips from the pros
Debt is not much fun and when faced with it, people sometimes look for complicated debt solutions and often overlook the many simple ways that you can save money. Believe it or not, one of the simplest and most effective debt solutions is to get hold of a pen and a piece of paper and make a list. By this I mean that keeping a daily record of your expenditure can reveal some interesting facts about your spending and point you in the direction of how you can make easy savings right away. My Father first introduced me to this, showing me the little piece of paper that he kept in his wallet. But at the time I just rolled my eyes and ignored his advice - big mistake. It was only a few years later when I wanted to try to seriously start saving money in order to make a dent in my mortgage loan. But this debt solution is not only useful for helping you to pay off a mortgage debt, but also credit cards and student loans and many other types of debt.

At the beginning of each month, I would just tear a piece off an old envelope and write my salary at the top and then immediately subtract the amount I want to save in order to pay off my mortgage debt. I could then clearly see how much I money I had to get me through the month. I then simply subtracted everything I spent when I spent it. The key to this is to writing down absolutely everything, no matter how small. I found that it was really easy to do - I would either write something down on the list as soon as I spent the money or take two minutes in the evening at home to go back over what I had spent during the day. Whenever there was a fairly large sum on the list, I would just write down what it was next to the amount, so that I could remember.

Once you have kept your list for a couple of weeks, you already start to make some fascinating discoveries. It was not the big amounts on my list that had to be dealt with, as I had imagined. These were essentials, which there was no way I could do without. However, the small amounts on my list were doing the damage! I was well aware that I was buying something to eat EVERY morning before going into the office, but I was totally unaware of what it was costing me. I was spending 2.75 British Pounds every morning on this. That was adding up to around 55 Pounds per month! As soon as I realised this, I started making my own. In addition to this, I could always turn to my list at any point during the month and see how much money I had left until the next pay day. This way, there was never any danger that I would have to go into the overdraft on my bank account.

This in itself represented a real saving that I started making each month and once I had cut one or two other unnecessary expenses revealed by my lists, I was making very significant savings, which I then put towards paying off my mortgage debt. Keeping a list of this type is a simple yet powerful tool because it will clearly and simply show you where your money is going, and give you the control to make some changes.

Emmanuel Mendonca is the webmaster of Debt Genius at http://www.debtgenius.com which provides free advice on debt consolidation, how to get out of debt and on saving money.

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Debt and the New Bankruptcy Law - It is harder to wipe your debts away

Last April, President Bush enthusiastically signed into law the oddly-named Bankruptcy Abuse and Consumer Protection Act. This bill, representing the biggest overhaul of bankruptcy law in twenty-five years, was written in order to discourage "bankruptcy of convenience." Proponents of the bill, which included the credit card industry, say that the bill is necessary in order to stop an avalanche of bankruptcy filings by drug users and compulsive shoppers and gamblers. The law makes it harder to have debts wiped away, requires credit counseling for those considering bankruptcy, and holds attorneys responsible for paperwork errors by their clients in bankruptcy cases. The net result will probably be chaos, as fewer attorneys will handle bankruptcy cases, credit counselors will raise their fees, and more consumers with problem debt will be clueless as to what they should do next. Adding to the confusion are some new statistics that suggest that a large number of bankruptcies that are thought to be personal are actually business bankruptcies. As a result, the new law may be unfairly targeting consumers for punishment when they are not actually the biggest part of the problem. Worse, it could be harming small businesses.

Studies suggest that the number of business bankruptcies may actually be up to ten times higher than previously reported. Many small businesses that fail and file for bankruptcy do so under guidelines that technically classify them as personal bankruptcies. The new law doesn't account for this, however, and treats such bankruptcy filers no differently than those who file because they can't stop shopping. It benefits no one to force a small store owner to undergo mandatory credit counseling when their business may have failed due to other reasons, such as having a big-box retailer more in next door. Even if that is the case, the law will require the bankrupt business owner to attend counseling in order to learn about managing personal and household budgets. This wastes the time of both the business owner and the credit-counseling agency and denies valuable counseling resources to those people who may really need it.

In time, Congress may amend this legislation if certain aspects of it do not work as intended. In the meantime, small business owners and those with personal debt problems will be inconvenienced, credit counseling agencies will be overworked, and no one will be any better off for it.

©Copyright 2005 by Retro Marketing. Charles Essmeier is the owner of Retro Marketing, a firm devoted to informational Websites, including End-Your-Debt.com, a site devoted to debt consolidation and credit counseling, and HomeEquityHelp.com, a site devoted to information regarding home equity loans.


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What to do when debt gets you down - Tips from the pros
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