accept credit cards Debt Handling Solutions Sometimes debt can seem overwhelming. In those instances, or even before things get that far out of hand, get back to basics and try some of these debt handling solutions. BASICS – Lower insurance deductibles for your homeowners, renters and vehicles policies where appropriate and save money. Don’t take chances on bouncing checks; instead get covered with overdraft protection and pay about the same as what it would cost for one bounced check to cover our account for an entire year. Ask your banker about packaged account services. Many offer free savings and checking accounts with free overdraft protection and checks, free online bill paying and more. When you shop, check your receipts, even for groceries. Many times items ring up at incorrect prices. Sometimes store policy allows for no errors, meaning you get the items free if it wrings up wrong. So carry along a handheld calculator or pencil with small notepad to tally up your charges. REACH OUT- If you have medical debt, the first thing healthcare offices try to do is get you to charge the bills or refinance your home, etc. STOP. Before you take such a drastic step, check with legal counsel. There are often other steps to take first. For example, notify the billing parties and tell them you need to apply for financial aid. Many have forms to complete, and although they may be lengthy, remember they’re for free money to pay your bills. Reach out, take forms and fill them out. Then set up minimum payment arrangements for the remaining balances, even if it’s just $10 a month for 30 years. Healthcare bills are not like credit card debt and do not need to be reported to the credit bureau in the same manner. Also reach out with merchandise and return any recently purchased items that you can for a refund. Credit cards and mail order companies generally allow you 30 days to inspect your purchase. Return any you can for refunds. If purchases are beyond the 30 days and for various reasons don’t hold up to their end of the “bargain;” i.e. they broke already or never worked right to begin with, get on a letter writing campaign pronto. Write the place of purchase and copy the manufacturer, the distributor, the Better Business Bureau and your state Attorney General’s Office. State the reasons our product is faulty and that you want a refund. It’s often rewarding to get help with other entities like these. No need to go it alone! So before your debt gets out of hand, take charge and get back to basics. Put some of these debt handling solutions into practice and make the most out of what you have. Friends Who Owe You Money Can Quickly Become Former Friends It’s pretty much common sense, or at least it’s been said a thousand times before, don’t lend money to friends and family. What is often missed in that warning is that you should also not sell things to friends and family. Here are a couple of scenarios. Your friends are over for a Christmas tree decorating party. Two of the guys know that you sell pre-owned designer men’s suits on eBay. They ask you if you have any new stock because they could use a new sports coat. “Sure look in the hall closet, see if you like anything.” After five minutes both men return, one wearing a Hugo Boss suit coat and the other is sporting a Zegna blazer. It’s the holiday season, you’re all friends, and even though you know you could get at least $80 each on eBay for them, you only paid $4.99, so you tell them you’ll sell them for $10 each. What the heck, it’s gift giving season anyway. Then they announce their checkbook is in the car, so they’ll pay you Tuesday when they see you next. Fast forward three months to March and they still haven’t paid you. Or perhaps you know a friend is looking with his teenage son to buy a car for Junior. You have another friend who is a self-employed mechanic and is always picking up older cars and fixing them up. You mention to friend #2 that friend #1 wants to buy a car for his son. Mechanic friend was going to sell the car for $900, but since it’s a friend of yours, he tells you to tell them they can have it for $600. You disclose all that’s right with it as well as all that will soon need repair. Friend and son drive the car, say they want it and will come over with money on Tuesday. They arrive on Tuesday with only $300 and tell friend #2 that they will have the balance paid off in 30 days and hoped he’d understand. Four months later and lots of pulling teeth, friend #1 dribbles in an occasional $10 here and $20 here toward their $300 debt. Yet they’ve had the car for months. So what went wrong in the above cases? The friends (now former friends) never asked to borrow money (to give you the opportunity to not lend them cash, as you’ve been warned). The seller-friends were blind-sided with the sudden convenience of no money after the transaction had already taken place. Because it was a friend, "c'mon what's little leeway among friends, anyway?" the sellers felt cornered and awkward to rescind the offer after they had already agreed to it. The only real solution is to never, as in never ever, sell anything to family and friends unless you have cash in hand, at that moment. And don’t feel obligated to give them a deal of a lifetime. If you could get a fair price for the item elsewhere, offer it to your friend at that price too. If you don’t, you could be losing out on a whole lot more than income. Friendships and families are often severed because of transactions gone bad. Don’t let it happen to you. Save Time, Money, and Frustration and Get the Right Credit Score You go into a lender's office prepared to apply for and receive a loan. After all, you've done your homework, you've pulled your credit reports and you know what your credit scores are--you even got one score from each of the three major credit bureaus: Equifax. Experian, and TransUnion. You are shocked when your loan is denied, or maybe you were approved, but the interest rate is much higher than you anticipated. How can that be you say? My credit score is good, I know I checked. Maybe it's not as good as you think. It all depends on there you got it and what kind of credit score it is. The fact is there are several different credit scoring methods. Credit scores calculated from the same credit reports can differ substantially from credit scoring method to credit scoring method. So how can you ever know what your credit score really is? Well, luckily, 75% percent of lenders use FICO scores exclusively and you can purchase FICO scores yourself--you just have to know where to go. (www.myfico.com) FICO credit scoring is a numeric method of scoring your credit worthiness developed by Fair Isaac and Company. Your credit score is a number between 300 and 850 that tells creditors how likely you are to pay your bills. The higher the number, the better it looks to potential lenders and creditors. The three major credit bureaus each have their own version of the FICO score: Equifax uses the Beacon system, TransUnion uses the Empirica system, and Experian uses the Experian/Fair Isaac system. Despite each credit bureaus' use of their own versions, all systems are based the original Fair Isaac FICO scoring method, so each credit score calculated with these systems are generally called FICO scores. However, although most lenders do use FICO scoring, some lenders may have their own scoring methods. There is only one place where you can get your FICO score from all three bureaus and that is at www.myfico.com. If you order your credit score from anywhere else, again be aware that these scores are "FAKOs" (or "fake") and can differ considerably from your FICO credit scores. Adding to the confusion is the credit bureaus themselves. Recently, Experian revealed that the national average credit score of its consumers is 678. This is very misleading to the average consumer. When you buy your credit report and score directly from Experians website, you are getting what they call the "PLUS Score," which is NOT a FICO score, and is NOT used by lenders anywhere. (Equifax is the exception--you can buy your FICO score directly from them at their website; however, the only place to get all three scores together is at www.myfico.com.) The 678 PLUS Score reported by Experian is actually the average of consumers' PLUS Scores, not their FICO Scores. Clearly, the PLUS Score (and all Non-FICO scores) are useless. Not only that, but such hype misleads consumers into purchasing their PLUS Score thinking that they are getting the same credit score that their lender will use. Non-FICO scores are worthless not matter what the credit bureaus or any website selling non-FICO scores claim. Even a few points difference in your credit score can mean confronting the reality of the loss of thousands of dollars out of your pocket--a loss that you probably didn't plan for. The next time you want the most accurate credit score available, do yourself a favor and get the industry standard: the FICO credit score. Eliminate Debt Legally, Lawfully and Ethically You are trying hard to eliminate your loans but keep falling back on your old ways. This constantly leads you back to square one situation and debts seem like they are ever increasing. This is the time to go for debt elimination. The good news is that you are not alone, if you are thinking about debt elimination. The bad news is you still haven’t really started this journey. That means you are still in debt. It is always difficult to know which way to start from. Average household debt in UK is £44857 including mortgage and £7,694 excluding mortgage.UK has seen a rapid increase in household debts which means that more than half of the people have trouble meeting their monthly payments, and being driven further and further into debt. With an average family having 14 credit cards, and various other debts – debt elimination seems only logical. However, debt elimination doesn’t always seem easy. Before going for Debt elimination, you have to understand your debt situation. Understanding debt elimination is equally necessary. Then only you would be able to decide which one would eliminate both the creditors and debts from your life. You have an interesting compilation to choose from. Debt elimination includes – debt consolidation loans, debt management, debt consolidation, debt negotiation, debt settlement, debt counselling etc. Debt consolidation loans are a very popular way to debt elimination. Overdue bills payment, each month, is devastating for financial freedom. Debt consolidation loans can certainly reduce your monthly payments and your interest rates. Debt elimination with debt consolidation reduces your debt by consolidating all your credit card debts, auto loans, education loans, unsecured loans into a single loan. You can save a lot while moving towards debt elimination. A very important process in debt elimination is debt management. Debt management looks for a financial plan that suits your financial circumstance. A debt elimination plan would consolidate all your unsecured debts into single, affordable monthly payment. This payment is carefully calculated by a trained debt consultant, who with the debtor’s assistance reviews their financial position and quote a payment which ensures financial control. This amount is calculated keeping in mind the monthly expenses of the debtor. This debt elimination sees to it that the debtor doesn’t miss any of his commitment like mortgage, rent, car finance, utility bills etc. Debt elimination with debt counselling can provide you with debt advice for financial planning. This sort of debt elimination would prevent you from getting into future debt. Debt counselling services can talk to your creditors about reducing interest rate, eliminating late fees and extending loan term. For debt elimination, search a debt counselling agency that is the member of National Foundation for Credit Counselling (NFCC) or the Association of Independent Consumer Credit Counseling Agencies (AICCCA). Debt elimination through debt negotiation is one of the fastest ways to remove credit card debts and personal loans while avoiding bankruptcy. By negotiating debt, debt can be reduced by 40%-60%. Debt elimination via negotiation is like the last resort. The lender has little enthusiasm to work out reconciliation for a payless on the full amount. Hence, debt negotiation is a tricky situation and should be handled by a reliable debt negotiator. Yet, at times debt elimination through negotiation is the only logical solution. Under normal circumstances debt counselling should be the first step. Debts are not meant to be a permanent affair. It is one affair you will regret unquestionably. Debt elimination is the beginning of the road called debt free. You cannot separate one from the other. They are related and go hand in hand with each other. If you have struggled a good deal with loans and that too with unsuccessful results then debt elimination is meant for you. The destination called debt free begins with debt elimination. After having herself gone through the ordeal of loan borrowing, Natasha Anderson understands the need for good quality loan advice. Her articles endeavor to provide you the wise counsel in the most elementary way for the benefit of the readers. She hopes that this will help them to locate the loan that beseems their expectations. She works for the UK debt consolidation web site uk debt consolidations. Stop Debt Collectors By Omar M. Omar Can you stop debt collectors ? . . .You better know you can You can stop debt collectors under the law provided by the Fair Debt Collection Practices Act. If you use credit cards, owe money on a personal loan, or are paying on a home mortgage, you are a "debtor." If you fall behind in repaying your creditors, or an error is made on your accounts, you may be contacted by a "debt collector." You should know that in either situation, the Fair Debt Collection Practices Act requires that debt collectors treat you fairly and prohibits certain methods of debt collection. Of course, the law does not erase any legitimate debt you owe. What debts are covered? Personal, family, and household debts are covered under the Act. This includes money owed for the purchase of an automobile, for medical care, or for charge accounts. Who is a debt collector? A debt collector is any person who regularly collects debts owed to others. This includes attorneys who collect debts on a regular basis. How may a debt collector contact you? A collector may contact you in person, by mail, telephone, telegram, or fax. However, a debt collector may not contact you at inconvenient times or places, such as before 8 a.m. or after 9 p.m., unless you agree. A debt collector also may not contact you at work if the collector knows that your employer disapproves of such contacts. Can you stop a debt collector from contacting you? You can stop a debt collector from contacting you by writing a letter to the collector telling them to stop. Once the collector receives your letter, they may not contact you again except to say there will be no further contact or to notify you that the debt collector or the creditor intends to take some specific action. Please note, however, that sending such a letter to a collector does not make the debt go away if you actually owe it. You could still be sued by the debt collector or your original creditor. May a debt collector contact anyone else about your debt? If you have an attorney, the debt collector must contact the attorney, rather than you. If you do not have an attorney, a collector may contact other people, but only to find out where you live, what your phone number is, and where you work. Collectors usually are prohibited from contacting such third parties more than once. In most cases, the collector may not tell anyone other than you and your attorney that you owe money. What must the debt collector tell you about the debt? Within five days after you are first contacted, the collector must send you a written notice telling you the amount of money you owe; the name of the creditor to whom you owe the money; and what action to take if you believe you do not owe the money. May a debt collector continue to contact you if you believe you do not owe money? A collector may not contact you if, within 30 days after you receive the written notice, you send the collection agency a letter stating you do not owe money. However, a collector can renew collection activities if you are sent proof of the debt, such as a copy of a bill for the amount owed. What types of debt collection practices are prohibited? Harassment. Debt collectors may not harass, oppress, or abuse you or any third parties they contact. For example, debt collectors may not, use threats of violence or harm, publish a list of consumers who refuse to pay their debts (except to a credit bureau), use obscene or profane language or repeatedly use the telephone to annoy someone. False statements. Debt collectors may not use any false or misleading statements when collecting a debt. For example, debt collectors may not: * falsely imply that they are attorneys or government representatives; * falsely imply that you have committed a crime; * falsely represent that they operate or work for a credit bureau; * misrepresent the amount of your debt; * indicate that papers being sent to you are legal forms when they are not; or * indicate that papers being sent to you are not legal forms when they are. Debt collectors also may not state that: * you will be arrested if you do not pay your debt;* they will seize, garnish, attach, or sell your property or wages, unless the collection agency or creditor intends to do so, and it is legal to do so; or actions, such as a lawsuit, will be taken against you, when such action legally may not be taken, or when they do not intend to take such action. Debt collectors may not: * give false credit information about you to anyone, including a credit bureau; * send you anything that looks like an official document from a court or government agency when it is not; or * use a false name. Unfair practices. Debt collectors may not engage in unfair practices when they try to collect a debt. For example, collectors may not: * collect any amount greater than your debt, unless your state law permits such a charge; * deposit a post-dated check prematurely; * use deception to make you accept collect calls or pay for telegrams; * take or threaten to take your property unless this can be done legally; or * contact you by postcard. What control do you have over payment of debts? If you owe more than one debt, any payment you make must be applied to the debt you indicate. A debt collector may not apply a payment to any debt you believe you do not owe. What can you do if you believe a debt collector violated the law? You have the right to sue a collector in a state or federal court within one year from the date the law was violated. If you win, you may recover money for the damages you suffered plus an additional amount up to $1,000. Court costs and attorney's fees also can be recovered. A group of people also may sue a debt collector and recover money for damages up to $500,000, or one percent of the collector's net worth, whichever is less. Where can you report a debt collector for an alleged violation? Report any problems you have with a debt collector to your state Attorney General's office and the Federal Trade Commission. Many states have their own debt collection laws, and your Attorney General's office can help you determine your rights. About The Author © Copyright. http://www.deleteuglycredit.com Omar M. Omar is the owner of http://www.deleteuglycredit.com. The website is dedicated to provide credit consumers with information about their credit right and how to dispute inaccurate information on their credit report. Omar M. Omar is also the author Of "The Credit Repair Bible" book. You have permission to publish this article electronically or in print, in your Newsletter, on your website, or in your E-Book, as long as the author's Resource Box is included with the article. omar@deleteuglycredit.com