May 22, 2013

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4 quick and easy techniques to tackle collection agency and ensure a debt free lifeahead

If you default on your debt payments several times, after a stipulated period of time, the lending institutions sell the debts to the collection agency. The collection agency can not put you behind bars but they can certainly drive your live crazy by repeated phone calls,millions of mails and billions of e- mails. However a little patience and a few simple strategies like debt validation or debt settlement programs can spare you the horror of collection agencies. Read on to know what these resorts are in detail.

Debt validation
When the collection agent knocks at your door for the first time to recover the owed amount, your first and foremost duty is to ask for a debt validation to verify whether you are liable to pay the owed amount which the collection agents are claiming. Under theFair Debt Collection Practices Act the consumers are protected from all sorts of illegal collection practices. If you know your consumers rights well that are conferred on you by FTC then it would be much easier for you to save yourself from harassing phone calls, profane language and collection threats.

Verification of SOL
Your next step must be to gain as much knowledge as possible on statute of limitation (SOL) on your state. By doing so you can have a clear idea about the time when your debt collectors are allowed to file a lawsuit against you in order to collect the owed amount and how much time you have on your hand to prepare for the impending danger.If you discover that your debts are more than 7 years older you can be free from its obligations and the amount will be eliminated from your credit report.

Debt settlement
If you find your account is yet to exceed the SOL you can consider debt settlement as your viable option. By settling your debts you can slash down the spiraling interest rates and eradicate the late fines entirely. Settlement not only lowers your outstanding balancebut also allows you to pay through an affordable repayment plan.

Keep a track of your dealing with the collection agency
It is highly recommended to maintain a record of your dealings with the collection agency. When the debt collectors give you a call you can record the phone call as evidences of the debt collection agency’s ill treatments with you. If your state law asks you to inform your collection agency before recording the calls then you must follow the order.

Make sure you get the agreement for settling your unpaid debts signed by the collection agency before making the final payments. If you find difficulty to negotiate on the owed amount with the agency, hire a debt relief company who can provide expert help andadvice. Hopefully, by following the above mentioned points you can pay off your debts with ease and protect yourself from legal hassle.

Filed Under: Debt Management

Staying focused when paying off debt

One of the most important things when trying to repay debt is that you remain focused
on your goal. A lot of people set out with good intentions, but end up taking much
longer than planned – often because they haven’t given enough thought to how they’ll
actually do it.

With the right planning, you’ll know in advance roughly how long it will take you to
repay your debts, and how it will fit in with the rest of your budget. Here’s how you
can stay focused and (hopefully) make repaying debt a much simpler task.

How to stay focused

Set out your goal
You should have a plan of how much you intend on paying towards your debts each
month. Based on that, you can work out how long it’s going to take to fully pay them
off.

As a very basic example, if you have total debts of £10,000, you might think you
could repay that in 50 months (just over four years) by repaying £200 a month.
However, bear in mind that your debts will be accruing interest – so it’s well worth
taking some time with an online ‘debt calculator’ to see how much you’ll actually
repay, then base your maths around that.

And bear in mind that some debts will require a fixed payment, even if others allow
you to repay as much as you like each month (as long as you repay at least a certain
minimum).

Setting yourself some firm targets can work out much better than taking things
month-by-month and repaying varying amounts each month.

Put together a budget
To get a good idea of how much you can safely afford to pay towards your debts, you
should put together a budget. It’s quite simple: just add up your total essential living
costs (not including debt repayments for now) and subtract that from your monthly
take-home pay.

What’s left can then be safely put towards repaying your debts, without running the
risk of using money you should be keeping for things like your mortgage/rent.

Be realistic
You don’t have to put all of your spare income towards your debts – without spending
money on a few luxuries each month, life could get pretty boring. It’s better to stay
focused on repaying a realistic amount (that you can comfortably afford) than to
stretch your finances too far.

Just remember that the more you can afford to pay each month, the sooner you should
be free of debt, and the less interest you’re likely to pay in the long run.

And remember – if your debts are becoming difficult to repay, don’t hesitate to get
debt advice from an expert. Many people spend a lot of time trying to tackle debt
problems on their own, but simply getting a bit of expert debt advice could make
things much easier.

Filed Under: General

Investing in your dinner – an interesting dilemma

One of my employees, who is on the path to debt free, found himself with an unexpected $500. It spawned the question, outside of paying down existing debt, where would be the best place to put it. You might be surprised with what we came up with.

First, gas prices are through the roof and it is going to be a miserable problem for months/years to come. Second, he has a family of 6 with 2 kids in high school, one in middle school, and one in grade school. Third, inflation is here; like it or not.

Now, speaking from an investment side, this is what he is doing: stocking up on bulk dry goods (beans and rice), canned vegetables and canned soup. Why? He has a family to feed and with the increased costs of transportation and the general affect of inflation, that $500 investment in long-shelf-life food could end up being significant – especially when compared to the expected interest he could get on that money over the time of consumption of the food.

It is a strange thought, but lets say the cost of food jumps by 10% over the next 3-6 months. That is technically a solid gain over the 2% APR you’ll get on a savings account right now…just something to think about and take a lesson from our forefathers who stored as much as they could from fall harvests.

Filed Under: Frugality

Broken

My site got hacked the other night and I broke something getting it fixed. Should be back to normal this weekend.

Filed Under: General