Once you hit a point where your debt becomes so massive that you can no longer pay all of your bills on time, you cross a threshold where your problems with debt can only get worse if you don’t take action. If you can reduce your non-debt related costs or increase your income, you might be able to pull yourself out of this situation, but it is much more likely that you will need to seek professional help in order to avoid bankruptcy.One of the ways that you can solve this problem is through debt consolidation. The basic idea behind this is that you replace all of your various debt payments with one monthly payment. This payment has a lower interest rate than most or all of your previous debts, and it has a smaller monthly amount. This allows you to avoid falling further into debt. Consolidation can be undergone in two basic ways, either through a program or through a loan. A program will negotiate with your creditors, collect monthly payments from you, and redistribute them to your creditors. These programs, even if they are reputable, often charge a fairly large monthly fee, however.If you choose to take out a loan, you can use the loan to pay off all of your other debts, and then pay off the loan instead of all of your various creditors. You can either get an unsecured loan or a secured loan. While a secured loan sometimes has lower interest rates, you will have to use an important asset like a car or a home as collateral. This means that if you fail to pay off the loan on time, you could lose these assets.A much safer option is to take out an unsecured consolidation loan. This option allows you to take out a loan, pay off all of your other debts, and start making lower monthly payments each month without having to risk losing your most prized possessions.Consolidation loans are not without their disadvantages. Even though the interest rate that you are paying is lower than the interest that you were paying on your previous debt, you will be paying off the debt for a longer period of time because the monthly payments are smaller. This means that you will end up paying more in total interest. Even so, for somebody with mounting debt, the primary concern is how much money has to be spent each month. Debt consolidation reduces this figure.
