Family Debt Advice

If you are in debt, there are ways of getting help. Working on budgeting your family income and family expenses is extremely difficult when you are starting a family, especially if you are still paying off student and wedding loan payments. However bad it seems though, you are not alone. There are companies and websites solely dedicated to giving advice on debt.

How do you Know if you’re in Debt?

It’s not as simple to figure out as you would think. Debt can happen in multiple ways. The most basic is to figure out if your family expenses are more than your family income or family budget. There are also credit statements to consider. Even if your ends are within your means, if you have massive amount of credit card debt that goes beyond your monthly budget, you are considered in debt.

Here are some warning signs that you and your family might be in, or nearing, debt or bankruptcy:

You can only afford the minimum payments on your credit cards every month
You or your spouse have been denied credit
You have at least one credit card that is close to, or is at, its max
Your bank accounts are overdrawn
You continue to make payments on your credit cards while trying to pay it off
You are occasionally late in making payments on bills, credit cards, etc.

If while reading that list you recognized a lot of tendencies that sounded familiar, you need to take a strong look at your income and take our debt advice on recognizing the problems and then trying to fix them.

Finding the Best Debt Advice

If you realize you are in debt, the next step is to find someone to give you financial and debt advice. There are plenty of counselors that offer debt advice and ways to get out of debt. The National Foundation for Credit Counseling offers counselors who (1) advise on managing your money, (2) offer solutions to your current financial problems, and (3) develop personalized plans to help with future financial difficulties. For more information, check out www.nfcc.org.

Another option is debt consolidation. FreeDebtSettlementAdvice.com gives advice on debt to people in all types of different debt situations. The site pairs you up with a debt specialist who helps consolidate your debts to get the largest amount of debt reduction available.

Some Debt Advice of our Own

Whoever you ask for debt advice, there are basic options to look for to get your family out of debt. They are:

Do nothing – Take our debt advice and do NOT take this lack of action. Doing nothing only compounds the problem. If you think you can handle it on your own by doing what you are doing, still talk to a debt counselor just to confirm you are capable of digging yourself out of the hole you’ve already dug.
Make minimum monthly payments – This might sound like the best thing to do, paying off your debt slowly but surely, but keep in mind that paying off the minimum balance allows your remaining balance to add huge amount of interest, making your balance actually much more and putting you further into debt.
File bankruptcy – Although many attorneys will give debt advice claiming this is the best option, if you file bankruptcy your chances of getting a loan or qualifying for a new credit card are slim to none.
Participate in credit counseling – These can be funded from credit card companies or by individual companies. It consolidates your payments into one monthly bill but stretches out payments into more years (depending on how much debt, generally 4-7 years).
Take out a debt consolidation loan – This comes in three types: debt-consolidation loans, balance transfers to another credit card, or home equity loans. A lot of the time this is just a temporary fix. Many families have found themselves right back into debt after a few months.
Debt settlement/debt negotiation – This can conceivably erase half of your unsecured debt. Debt settlement is designed to work within your budget and to reduce and settle debt in the shortest time possible. Once you have adequate funds available, negotiations with creditors begin