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This brief writing will enlighten you to some of the facts about credit counseling programs. These are the problems that result in a drop off rate of over 80% of the clients enrolled in these programs. Debtors should be knowledgable of these facts before they get themselves into a consumer credit counseling program to guarantee themselves they are deciding on a good financial move.

1. The vast majority of the credit counseling companies are made and funded by the actual credit card companies themselves. They are nothing more than a middle man for the credit card companies to collect the debt amount owed.

2. The credit counseling companies work for and represent the credit card companies; they do not work on behalf of the client. The credit card establishments dictate to the credit counseling company the monthly minimum payment that is required and the APR. There is no negotiating at all on this.

3. The credit counseling establishments can lower the APR, however they can never actually lower the original balance. The common interest rate on one of these programs is around 12% which is more in the middle than actually being very low. By not lowering the original balance they are not really a form of debt relief, this is just an sped up repayment program.

4. You will wind up actually putting out more than the principal debt amount, due to the monthly fees, APR and reduced monthly payments which greatly increases the amount of time you are going to be trapped in debt.

5. It does have a momentary bad impact on your credit score/report and is made a public record on your credit report, during the duration of the program.

6. Getting a mortgage for a house while on a credit counseling program can become very complex, almost impossible.

7. Here is the kicker and read very carefully. If you miss only one payment while on a consumer credit counseling program you will be kicked off and the credit card companies will not allow you to sign into another program for up to a year. Putting your bills to where they were prior to enrolling into the program, high interest and all. This is the reason why over 75% of the people enrolled in these programs fail off.

Sit back and really think hard about this for a minute. They put you on a consumer credit counseling program that may be up to 5 years or more. As we all know the adventure that is life has its good times and its bad times. If you find it very hard to be a client on the program in the first place you will fail. Any unforeseen financial problems as little or large as they may be might contribute to you falling behind just one payment and getting kicked out of the program. You need to seriously think about how unwavering your finances and income security are before enrolling into a consumer credit counseling program to evade being part of that 80%. The bottom line is debtors with a larger sum of debt such as $15,000 or more should look more towards debt settlement than credit counseling. Credit counseling is much more viable for people with much lower amounts of debt that do not have much of any problems staying current in the first place. If you are seeking to reduce your debt and get out of debt fast, then credit counseling is just not the way to go.