Credit Card Consolidation Vs. Debt Settlement - Which One Makes More Financial Sense For You?

May 11, 2010 - PRLog -- Credit cards have become one of the greatest problems for the general mass because of the high interest rates that they have which result in high debt accumulation which becomes unmanageable after a certain period of time. It is therefore important that a person tries to eliminate the debt as soon as possible. There are several methods of doing so. The best thing that can be done is to go for debt settlement. However, if the overall debt of all the credit cards taken together is less than $10,000 then, credit card debt consolidation followed by a debt management strategy is the best thing that a person can do.

Credit card debt consolidation can be done in two different ways. They are discussed below:

Transferring balance: The first thing a person can do is to transfer the balances from all the credit cards to one single card which has the lowest rate of interest. The consumer needs to contact the card company which has the lowest interest rate and then ask it to repay all the other cards. Once the company does so, the balance due from the other cards gets accrued to the one which pays off the others. Now, the consumer can actually create a budget and then start paying off the debt as per the schedule.

Consolidation loan: This is the other method and is quite widely used one. A consumer can approach a finance company and apply for a loan which will be used by the consumer to pay off all the debts that he or she has on the credit cards that he or she holds. Once all the cards are paid off by the unsecured loan that the consumer has taken, he or she can start paying off the debt as per the agreed terms and conditions by following a strict budget.

Debt settlement on the other hand is a bit different from credit card debt consolidation. Here the consumer never consolidates the card debts (and then pay off the same in full). He or she rather eliminates a part of the card debt and then repays the remaining amount of the money to the creditor. Here the creditor and the consumer mutually agree for a settlement. The deal can either be bagged by the consumer himself/herself or a settlement company can do the same for the consumer.

If you have over $10,000 in unsecured debt it may be a wise financial decision to consider a debt settlement. Due to the recession and overwhelming amount of people in debt, creditors are having no choice but to agree to debt settlement deals. To find legitimate debt reduction help in your state and get free debt advice then check out the following link.

http://www.creditcarddebtnegotiations.com