Has anyone ever done a debt consolidation program? It sounds like a good idea, finding a reputable agency that will help me get all my debt into one payment - while lowering or eliminating interest rates and still allowing me a budget to have money to live on. Part of my current problem (in addition to shopping sprees every few months) is having the money to pay my debts, but then running out of cash by the end of the pay period, so using the cards again.

I went to the AICCA website and got a few locations in Virginia that will help me…but I’d like to see if anyone out there has any advice before working with these kinds of companies. A few questions I have:

  • Will this consolidation include my car loan, or is that separate since it’s a secured loan?
  • Does my personal loan payment (which is about the same total amount of all my credit cards combined) count under this consolidation?
  • Will it mess up my credit score (which is currently good - almost 700) to consolidate like this?

I took a look at the current state of my debt, and also prioritized what bills were the most important to pay off the fastest - based on interest rate (taking advantage of the ones that have 0%) and total sum of money owed. But, I think that maybe doing something like this may be a better, more manageable option.

Somehow, over the past year, because I’m brilliant (or not), I’ve managed to consolidate and shift around my debt twice (between loans and balance transfers) and also actually increase my overall debt from April to October by over $7,000. Yep, I’m a real winner.

So, you can see…I need help. I’ve needed it for awhile.

Random side note for fun: I have 4,100 messages in my Gmail (personal address) since February 2005. Think it’s time to clean it out…