Getting Back On Your Feet Again
Apr 18th, 2009 by admin
The Long Road Back
If you followed our advice then you have successfully modified your home loan, restructured your debt and saved your home from foreclosure. Congrats! Now you’re back in the driver’s seat. Well, sort of anyway. But you’ve still got a lot of work that needs to be done to get back on your feet.
Now What?
If you’re like most of our clients, your home is safe but your credit reports are still a mess, your credit score is still in the gutter, you probably still can’t borrow a dime and you’re probably still drowning in other non-mortgage related debt. And the wolves are probably still nipping at your heels to pay that off. The problem is that most consumer and credit card debt, if it hasn’t been kept current, may now be accruing monthly compounding interest at or near the default rate of somewhere between 21% and 29%. OUCH!
At that rate and without direct intervention, you will NEVER pay it off during this lifetime. And if you tried, you will end up paying tens of thousands of dollars in accrued interest, penalties and fees unnecessarily. Fortunately, there’s a much better way.
You Need a New BattlePlan
It’s Time to Face the Facts: Your old debt management system didn’t work. In fact, it failed miserably. That’s how you got into financial trouble in the first place. You don’t need to be ashamed of it or be afraid to admit it and you certainly don’t need to blame anyone, or the economy, or the government. Just learn the lessons from the mistakes you made, flush the painful details and then move forward.
The most important thing, above all else, is for you to resolve that, instead of trying to manage your new finances with your same old thinking, you need a new battleplan and new marching orders that will get you out of debt quickly and affordably and KEEP you out of debt, will repair the damage that’s been done to your credit reports and credit scores, and will restore your creditworthiness so you can move on with your life and not make the same mistakes all over again.
What you need is an aggressive, comprehensive, multi-pronged battleplan that includes consolidating your non-mortgage related debts into a manageable package, negotiating away the accrued interest and penalties and much of the original principle down to a manageable figure you can afford, and then legally and formally settle that debt with your creditors so they agree to accept it as full payment and agree to report it as such on your credit reports. While that’s happening, you will need to start getting your credit reports cleaned up and squared away. And while that’s going on, you will need to re-establish your credit history and re-establish your credit-worthiness so that you can move on with your life. Finally, you’ll need to put a system in place to protect your newly established credit history from thieves and identity theft.
That’s what this section is all about.
First Things First
Step 1: Order Your Credit Reports and Credit Scores
The old adage “You can’t fix it if you don’t know what’s broke” is especially true when it comes to re-establishing your credit. So the first thing you need to do is to establish a clear picture of EXACTLY where you are starting from today and what damage needs to repaired or removed. You will do this by ordering a free copy of each of your three major credit reports and credit scores by clicking on the following link:
This free credit report offer is an outstanding value, because if you were to buy each of your credit reports and scores separately from the credit bureaus, you could pay more than $75, but by using the link above you will be able to download all 3 credit reports and all 3 credit scores FREE OF CHARGE. The reason you get them all in one place along with your credit scores for free is by accepting their offer of free credit monitoring for 30 days. There is no obligation, so once you’ve received your credit reports and credit scores, you can simply cancel the monitoring.
Debt Consolidation | Debt Negotiation | Debt Settlement
Step 2: Hire a Professional Debt Negotiation / Debt Settlement Company
One of the biggest and most costly mistakes people make is paying more than they need to in order to settle old debts, especially credit card debt. Credit card debt and other consumer debt tends to carry high rates of compounding interest, so the debt can quickly grow out of control. A good, professional debt negotiation / debt settlement firm can usually negotiate away most or all of the accrued interest and often a good portion of the principle balance due. This results in a legally lowered, much more manageable balance that can be paid off more quickly.
Credit card companies and most other vendors have been hit extremely hard by the economic crisis, and if you’re buried in debt and are having trouble making payments, with the proper negotiation techniques, they have good motivation to cut a deal with you because 30 to 50 percent of something is better in their minds than 100 percent of nothing.
A Word of Caution: Debt negotiation / debt settlement is NOT something you want to attempt on your own because if you miss even a single step, the results could be disastrous to your finances. To be done correctly and to protect yourself legally, you will want to trust this part to a professional debt settlement company.
Restore Your Credit Reports to Their Former Glory and Beyond
Step 3: Hire a Professional Credit Repair Company
If you’re like most people, home foreclosure wasn’t you’re only financial problem. In all likelihood, your credit score has taken a severe beating from all the late mortgage payments and other late payments. The foreclosure information on your credit reports will get you nowhere fast and will probably prevent you from obtaining additional credit from anyone. What you need is the nation’s largest, most respected credit repair company to go to work for you.
Another Word of Caution: This is another area where you don’t want to try to save a buck or two and do it yourself. The internet is full of do-it-yourself credit repair e-books that all claim to be able to teach you how to fix your credit yourself. Many teach techniques that are outright illegal or that will get you red-flagged by the credit bureaus. Overall, most are virtually worthless, so save your money. The latest statistic is that 97% of people who use this credit repair company have attempted to repair their credit themselves using information they found online, failed and gave up. 97%!
That’s because the credit bureaus make billions of dollars each year selling information, and bad news sells. They have set up entire systems designed specifically to thwart and frustrate the efforts of individuals attempting to repair their credit reports themselves. And with a 97% consumer failure rate, their system IS WORKING.
Don’t waste your time here; get professional, affordable, 100% legal results the first time. Leave this part to the nation’s most trusted credit repair company.
Protect Your New Credit From Identity Theft
Step 4: Establish a Way To Protect Your New Credit From Theives
Identity theft is at an all-time high, and getting worse every year. Now that you’ve gone through the long and painstaking process of settling your debts, cleaning up your credit and and re-establishing your new credit history, the LAST thing you need is for some joker to come in and hijack your identity and ruin your credit all over again.
Fortunately identity theft and unauthorized credit activity is easy to thwart with the right system. Best of all, it’s extremely affordable to protect yourself from identity theft.