Tag Archives: bankruptcy
Rebuilding Your Life After Bankruptcy; Don't Cave To Holiday Pressures! (Page 1 of 3)
There’s something about shopping during the holidays as I watch consumers being attacked by exuberant cashiers pushing their store’s credit card that gets me concerned for those trying to build a solid life after bankruptcy.
These clerks seem to be unaware of how careful individuals have been all year to build their life after bankruptcy; by watching what they spend, and how easy it is to go over budget. Offering a ¡°credit rebuilder¡± a new card is like offering a recovering chocoholic a gooey double-fudge brownie supreme.
The holidays bring about mixed feelings among my clients: joy, anxiety, fear, sadness¡.not any of it relating to the reason for the season.
Rebuilding your credit and creating the life after bankruptcy that you desire is a difficult tightrope balance between moving forward with your life and not ruining the upward progress of your credit score.
Holidays mean gift-giving gatherings with sometimes hundreds of people, if you total them all up. Pressure rises when the office party committee asks us to pitch in for gifts for management.
Your head starts spinning when you think about how your extended family has grown and how they will all exchange presents Christmas Eve at your house this year. You finally feel the wind knocked out of your sails when the cashier tells you that you can save up to 25% on your purchase if you apply for their wonderful store credit card.
Just remember and keep this thought at the front of your mind…creating the desirable life after bankruptcy is the objective, not the savings of 25% that is surely to be out of our original budget anyway.
As someone who has recently discharged a bankruptcy and is trying to rebuild life after bankruptcy as well as create a high credit rating, should you respond to such a sweet, seductive offer? (Twenty-five percent off purchases, after all, would give you the extra money to buy Aunt Millie that deluxe food steamer!)
But here’s what I teach as a financial counselor from Credit Is Key: though it is much easier said than done, do NOT apply for any credit cards during the holiday crunch.
Every financial move should be the result of planning and preparation for your life after bankruptcy – not suddenly caving in to pacify the salesclerk – or Aunt Millie. If you say ¡°yes,¡± then the store will make an inquiry on your credit.
Did you know that even a couple inquiries will actually hurt your credit?
Rebuilding your life after bankruptcy requires inner strength. A strength you have been nurturing and growing since your discharge. A strength that is given a boost by having a specific goal in mind and a planned strategy in place; building a wonderful credit rating to enjoy your life after bankruptcy. Help yourself! Instead of falling into the ¡°get-a-credit- card-and-reduce-your-spending¡± trap, try these ideas for holiday savings — without inquiries or damaging rejections. Always remember the objective…improve your life after bankruptcy by improving your credit rating!
Understanding debt consolidation
Debt consolidation is a solution offered to many people these days with explaining some real weird theories about it and it I leading to creation of more and more myths about it. Here well consider this debt consolidation in a simpler one and try to clear out whatever confusions arise in your mind. But first of all lets see what credit consolidation is and how you may get benefit from this. It is simply paying many smaller loans by having a larger one with some collaterals and lesser interest rate.
The points to be discussed about this debt consolidation are:
1. It is for those who are unable to manage their money matters and who are not good financial planners. Those who are capable of saving and paying off money successfully should avoid this and it may not prove beneficial to them.
2. It is nowhere equivalent to bankruptcy or settlement because in this way you are not either having the title of a bad payer or negotiating with the original creditors about some relaxation in your debt conditions.
3. It is a compulsion for you to be a home owner to have secured debt consolidation. The profitable consolidation only results after offering something as collateral and you cant do this unless you own your own real estate property of some great value.
4. It would never deteriorate your credit report or credit score but on other hand may prove helpful in improving this. As you are actually paying many small debts so your credit score may get improved in some cases.
5. It is not a tactic to reduce your debt but it is just a method of incorporating all of your debts into a single and a huge one. It doesnt mean at any point that debt on you is lessened.
6. debt consolidation companies are actually not required in this whole process if you have the knowledge and you can negotiate well with the creditor you can do it on your own in much successful manner.
7. You may require the help of a finance lawyer or an outsider help for the whole legislator and documentation portion of the deal. Because it contain many minute points to be handled.
8. yes, a drawback of this debt consolidation is the difficulty in getting future loans that somewhere resembles bankruptcy but remember by paying the monthly amounts regularly and improving your credit score you can overcome this handicap.
9. You may get into a digging well of having more and more debts in your life and end up in many unpaid debts that will allow the creditors to sale your valuables. So try to handle it with much more caution and financial wisdom.
10. It is just like receiving from one person and paying the other one but you receive with a lesser interest rate that is the profit point.
11. You wont be getting many payments calls daily for those small loans but yeah if you actually fail to pay this one you are at least going to receive one call.
12. It doesnt allow you to write a debt note unlike in bankruptcy.