I’m Facing Financial Leprosy, Help!

Feb 17
08:44

2009

Daniel Major

Daniel Major

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If you feel like you've been well and truly left out to dry by the financial institutions, you have every right. The current economic meltdown is the reason, and because of our excessiv spending of the last 5 years we're not totally blameless, but we're certainly not to blame for the financial mess that the US and the rest of the world is facing right now either. So why won't anyone offer us the financial help I seek and deserve?

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The economy is not in the greatest of shapes at the moment,I’m Facing Financial Leprosy, Help! Articles you’d have trouble borrowing a pen from a bank let alone money and if you entered this crisis with a credit history report that looked like a marker pen wielding, epileptic, tic-tac-toe fanatic had gone to town on it, then you haven’t got a chance.

Lenders don’t want to know you unless you have a credit history that resembles Christ’s resume; but all is not lost. This is the time when you should look to preserve what credit score you have and possibly improve it by some positive action.

We’ve already mentioned that lenders will treat owners of bad credit histories like social lepers, well that’s not completely true. If you are a home owning leper you may have a chance!

With the government urging banks and financial institutions to start lending again the likelihood is that the first borrowers who will benefit, are those able to offer collateral so if you fall into this bracket you may be able to apply for a secured consolidation loan, it won’t be easy though, and hopefully, by the time you will be able to do this, you may even have some value left in your!

If you don’t have any collateral I’m afraid it is about making the best of a bad situation and the best way to do this is to manage your debt effectively. You need to work out your income and your vital expenditure (mortgage or rent, utility bills, telephone, car costs, taxes, gas, basically everything you need to live, get to work etc.). Now, what you have left over is what you have available to pay off your unsecured debt each month.

Your biggest concern should be if you are struggling to make monthly payments yet you have more than enough to cover your monthly repayments – this generally means that you are partying way too hard and you probably have a drug problem too, get some help. If, however, and I suspect this maybe the case, you don’t have enough left over to cover your debts, then you need to start the process of negotiating with your creditors to lower your monthly payments before things start to get ugly and you’re debt keeps growing.

There are two ways to go about this; the first is to approach one of hundreds of debt management service companies currently available, many of them are excellent but just as many deserve to be put up against a wall and shot. I don’t, and never will, condone this sort of behavior towards financial institutions, it doesn’t work for a start; best to hit them in the pocket.

Seriously though, check out whoever you are considering speaking too with the Better Business Bureau first.

Debt management companies are excellent at negotiating with your creditors and will manage your debt by asking you to make a singular payment to them each month which they will distribute between your creditors, after taking a small management fee of course, even the non-profit companies have to eat!

The other alternative, and it is the one I would advise to use is as above but you act as your own debt manager; it is not as hard as you may think and the biggest benefit is you remain in total control the whole time.

If you want to know about the methods that the banks and other financial institutions hate people using to eliminate their debt quickly check out the sites at the end of this article. I have knick-named these methods ‘MEL’, which stands for Moral, Ethical and Legal, no wonder the banks hate them!