Credit Card Debt Relief – Help! I Cant Pay My Bills

Seems like you have decided to take this on yourself in the place of hiring a debt relief company. Well, if you have the talents and abilities to rival those of the professionals especially in the areas of communication, negotiation and documentation, then go on right ahead. After all, if a nurse with little background in taxation and the law can single-handedly take on the Internal Revenue Service and win, then so can you where debt relief is concerned.

There are certain things, however, that you must consider when settling credit card debts as a personal endeavor. These three tips will ensure that you are one step closer to successfully taking on those credit card companies.

Make Sure that Your Accounts Are Significantly Delinquent

You can try to negotiate a lower principal amount on your credit card bills as soon as you feel that making the minimum monthly payment is not going to be possible or if you feel that the debts are not going to be paid due to other fiscal priorities/emergencies. Keep in mind, however, that the debt relief process cannot be availed of until and unless your credit card accounts are significantly delinquent.

How deep should you be? Well, delinquent credit card accounts are written off as an accounting procedure once these have reached 180-plus days in the ageing method. The write-off subsequently devalues the account so much so that third parties can purchase it for as little as 5 percent of its face value.

To prevent this from taking place, the credit card company will be eager to settle the debt through a negotiation process. After all, if they can collect 50 percent of the total debt, it is still way better than the 5 percent they will get from third parties.

Keep Descriptive And Detailed Documentation

In this day and age, verbal agreements hold very little merit when it comes to settling credit card debts through the debt relief process. After all, it will be your word against the word of the collection agents and you should know by now that nobody wins in such a case.

Instead, you should maintain detailed and descriptive records of everything pertaining to the negotiation and settlement of your credit card loans.Send out the letters with accurate and comprehensive information to clearly specified addresses/addressees. Then, file these letters and other forms of communication in a binder for easy access.

If you do have a conversation on the phone, record the details.Document the date, time, the names of the people you spoke with, the contact numbers and the details of the conversation.

Make It Certified Mail

Once the settlement has been reached, send your payment through certified mail or any mail that can be tracked.Send the check along with a memo clarifying that the check is the full payment along with a copy of the settlement that was reached.Now, you will have pretty good documentation.

Dont forget the specific strategies that you need to use to settle the debt by yourself. Just remember these three tips and you should be alright during the entire process.

These are some specific steps that you can take. For more strategies on how to fix a bad credit report you should read our articles about what you can do when you cant pay credit card debt

After reading this, I’m sure you believe that getting out of credit card debt isn’t that difficult.