When trying to decide the best strategy for debt management, debtors are often offered two choices when faced with overwhelming debt: they can either get a credit card debt consolidation loan or declare bankruptcy. Both methods clear debt completely, offering a fresh start, but which is the best solution?
By looking at each solution in turn and then comparing them against each other, it’s possible to determine the best choice.
Debt Consolidation
Fortunately, there is an alternative, another legal way of getting clear of your creditors and your mounting bills. You can get a secured or unsecured loan that is of lower interest than your credit cards. This loan can be used to pay charge cards, leaving you only with the loan to pay off. Besides paying off your debts in full, your credit scores will have to reflect that you have “paid as agreed.”
All you have to do is provide reasonable proof that you have a steady income and can pay back the loan in a timely manner.
Bankruptcy
This should be considered the choice of last resort. The effects of a personal bankruptcy are long lasting. Although after declaring bankruptcy a court rules that you’re no longer held to your financial obligations, your credit report will show this for ten years. During that time, you can’t apply for a car, a home, and even life insurance. Sometimes, too, it prevents you from getting a job.
The Best Debt Solution
Although both forms of debt management provide the same outcome: a legal release from indebtedness, they do this in completely different ways. With bankruptcy, a court order frees you from further obligation to your creditors. With debt consolidation, a blanket loan frees you from further obligation to your creditors. Bankruptcy ruins your credit report and a debt consolidation loan saves it from ruin. A debt consolidation loan is better provided you can provide proof of regular work. Otherwise, if you have no income coming in and no way of obtaining employment in the near future, then a personal bankruptcy may have to be filed.
