Traditional Debt Consolidation

As explained before, debt consolidation is a way for people with high interest rates to combine their debts into one payment to become debt free faster. Traditional South Carolina debt consolidation applies reduced interest rates to your various accounts to help you pay off your debt more quickly. This type of South Carolina debt consolidation is for people who are not in danger of bankruptcy but need relief from sky-high interest rates. To benefit from traditional debt consolidation, you should:

• Have many, high-interest debts
• Be fairly current on your payments
• Not have consolidated previously
• Have under $20,000 in unsecured debt
• Want to pay off your debts responsibly without damaging your credit

Debt Negotiation

Another option offered by most South Carolina debt consolidation companies is debt negotiation. Debt negotiation is a much more serious intervention for those with large amounts of debt on which they are severely delinquent. Debt negotiation requires you to cease paying your creditors for a while while your South Carolina debt consolidation service negotiates and talks with your creditors to reduce the payoff amount of your debt. During this time, you will make deposits into a holding account until an agreement is reached with your creditors. At that time, you will pay your creditors with the money you have accumulated in your account. Usually, debt negotiation is able to reduce the customer's total amount of debt by about 50%. To benefit from debt negotiation, you should:

• Have at least $20,000 in unsecured debt
• Be delinquent on your payments (at least three months)
• Understand the negative impact the service will have on your credit
• Be in danger of bankruptcy
• Possibly have already dropped out of or fallen behind in a debt consolidation program