Does anyone have personal experience w/ debt consolidation services?

Coma, one of these services literally changed my life for the better, so this topic is very personal to me.

I got out of college and had massive credit card debt. I thought the best thing to do was to take a loan and pay them off. I took the loan....but didn't pay them off. Obviously, that made things even worse.

I joined Consumer Credit Counseling Service. They set up a plan for me to pay a certain amount every month (automatically taken from my checking account) towards my 4 credit cards. They cut the interest rates in half for 3 of them.

About this time last year, I finally finished the plan and all 4 cards were paid in full. I can't even explain how satisfying it was being debt free for the first time in my life. Now I have one credit card and I pay it off in full every month. This time next year, I will hopefully be ready to buy a house. None of this would be possible without CCCS.

It does affect your credit negatively at first, but in my case, my credit was already shot. Once you've been on the plan for a while, your credit report will show month after month of on time payments. Now my credit is much improved. I wouldn't recommend it if you presently have good credit. But if it's a last resort, I would do it yesterday.

Hope that helps.

Oh, one more thing. Here's the website that got me started.

http://www.nfcc.org/

Do not, I repeat, DO NOT call any of the "non profit" companies you see on TV. They keep more of your money than they send to the credit card companies and are far from "non profit". CCCS is the only way to go.

 

You're right...there was a thread sometime last year I believe...keep it bumped-up for a while.

 

Fire away.

 

Mrs JB and I have used one with tremendous success. It was a godsend.

 

i2k,

would you mind terribly if I e-mailed you a picture of a crystal knee warmer?