We often think as an ordinary guy or girl that we are insignificant and can’t do anything about our debt problems if lenders put pressure on us. That is wrong on so many levels and during this post and subsequent posts I’m going to show you how you wrestle control back from your lender.
I warn you this is not going to be a lender bashing rant, just my experiences and some solid advice that anyone can follow no matter what country you are in. The rules may vary from country to country but I’m sure the principles are the same.
The first thing to realise is it does not matter how you got into the position of not being able to meet your debt repayments. It does not matter to the lender if you have been unfortunate, such as illness or if you have been frivolous and just spent too much money. So don’t hide away because you’re worried about get asked lots of awkward questions about why you took out this loan or that, it just does not happen.
What lenders really want to know is what your current position is. So your first task is exactly that work out where you are. Bundle up together your bills and expenses first and work out what it costs to live for a month line by line. Detail every last thing you can think of from the obvious like mortgage, food, petrol to the less obvious like lunch money or car tax.
Once you have done that tackle the dreaded credit cards and loans. Write down how much you have left to pay (roughly) and what the monthly payments are. With the expenditure above you now no where you are financially and if after taking the loans/credit cards and expenses away from your earnings you are in a negative you need to go to stage two.
Contact your lenders or a debt solutions provider. If you going to contact a lender there are a few things you should remember. First of all they have a duty to treat you fairly and my experience is they do, now and again you get an ass at the other end of the phone but that usually the individual rather than the lender.
Secondly and perhaps more importantly it’s in the lenders interest to get you through your debt problems. They want their money back and they know if they are not flexible with people it usually ends up with people giving up altogether, ignoring the problem and eventually going bankrupt. If this happens obviously the lender more often than not ends up with nothing. So they want to help in most cases and they are used to helping, they will usually quickly work out what you can afford to pay and let you reduce payments to that level.
So go out and get back on top of the situation by assessing where you are and then contacting the lenders as soon as possible. Remember these big bad institutions are nothing more than people like you or me, be nice to them and they are usually more than civil back. Good luck!
