If you’re reading this blog, your credit is probably not in the best shape.
Okay, that was soft-pedaling. Your credit sucks. It’s seriously in the hole. You have a handful of credit cards that are all maxed out, you can’t pay your mortgage, you have student loan providers who are pissed at you. You also filled out one of those magazine cards that said “Bill me later” and now they’re mad at you about the $11 for an issue of Vanity Fair and sending the hounds of credit collection after you.
It’s bad. It’s really, really bad. And you’re feeling like there’s nothing anyone can do to make it any better.
You’re not alone.
There are thousands of people across this country and on into the next who are feeling the same way you are. Their credit just got out of control, and now it’s broken forever. It will never be okay again. Everyone is feeling this way. Everyone. You are not alone.
This is important to remember when you’re feeling like it was stupid of you to get into this situation. You have to remember that everyone was doing it. It made sense. It seemed to be working out okay for everyone else. You did not get here because you are the only one to fall for a credit promise that didn’t pan out.
You have to really look at it.
Most people, when they’re confronted with a situation they know is bad, get ostrich syndrome. Stick your head in the sand. Don’t look directly at it. If you’re very, very quiet, maybe the bad credit will just go away and bother someone else.
Remember that old adage, “Know thy enemy”? Yeah, it’s time to dust that one off. The only way to get rid of your bad credit is to know why it’s bad. When you know why it’s bad, then you’ll know how you can make it good again.
Here’s what we bet you’re thinking right now: “Whatever. It’s bad, and the only thing I can do is make payments, and I don’t have any money to make payments, and I really don’t want to know exactly how much money I know when I’m dead certain that whatever the total is, I can’t afford it.”
Sound about right?
Here’s a newsflash for you: even if there is no way to make this problem go away completely, there are still probably ways to make it better.
The only way to figure out what those ways are is to get out all of the bills. All of them. Spread them out on the table. And see what the damage is. Look at your agreements. Figure out loopholes. We know it’s rough. We know it really sucks to see how terrible it’s gotten. But it’s the only way to get it better.
Speaking of which.
You can make it better.
This is true. We know it doesn’t feel true, but it is. It will take time, and effort, and energy, and we get that you don’t really feel like you have those things right now. It takes a lot of courage to get all the credit reports out and take a good, hard look at the situation.
There are lots of things you can do without making minimum payments. You can challenge your creditors on errors they’ve made in your account, which may actually help repair your credit. You can increase your card limits – not to spend them, but to make your credit better by increasing your limit to balance ratio. You can open secured credit cards. You can negotiate a lower payment rate. There may be pieces of your agreement that make allowances if you are unemployed.
If you’re really stuck, and you don’t know how to make it better, and you wish someone would just do it for you, that’s also an option. That’s what we do. We know a couple of other really quality companies who can help. There are financial planners and money managers. Almost every one of those people, if you find a good one, can help. They will pay for themselves in the space of a month.
And you won’t have to feel quite so helpless anymore.
If you want to talk about what you can do right now, hit us up for a free consult and we’ll help you sort through everything. Trust us. If you man up and confront the problem head-on, you will feel much better. Before it was this amorphous thing. Now it’s got a shape and a name and you know what to do about it. You’ll know your enemy.
Then you can go out and dispatch the bastard. Doesn’t that sound like fun?
