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Are you a student who has just entered the college? If answered yes, then the most exciting thing for you should be gaining financial freedom. Though as a young adult, you must love the idea of financial freedom, but unless you handle your plastics in the best way possible, you can’t stay on the right financial track. Most of the college students owe multiple credit cards and handle them together at the same time and therefore they fall in credit card debt. Credit card consolidation is perhaps the most common way of combining your credit card debts but what are the consolidation steps that a college student may take in order to get back on the right financial track. Check out some such steps.

·Get rid of all your plastics: Though the plastics may seem to be things that can make it easier for you to purchase things without cash but when these plastics are misused, they become nasty debt generators. Before you even take an attempt to reduce your debts through credit card debt consolidation, you should stop using all your plastics so that you don’t incur further debt in the long run.

·Save money to make payments: If you even consolidate your debts on your own, you should save enough money so that you can make timely payments on the loans after the interest rates are lowered. Make sure you save at least 10% of what you earn in a month so that you can easily make timely payments on the accounts.

·Negotiate with your creditors: As it is always better to consolidate your debts on your own, you should negotiate with your creditors and tell them about the financial hardship that is barring you from making timely payments. Ask them to revise the interest rates so that you can make payments with ease. Always speak to your creditors as they can help you with revision of your repayment structure.

·Start making payments: Soon as the creditors lower the interest rates on your credit card debt accounts, you should start making the monthly payments on time. If you want to lower the payment, you should tell the creditor as they will set the repayment plan in accordance with your monthly income that you make in a month. Talk to them and write a single monthly check to the creditors instead of making multiple payments.

Therefore, when you want to delete your financial worries and boost your credit score, you should go for credit card consolidation. Only when you can’t handle your debts on your own, you may get help from a professional company that can do all the negotiations on your behalf.

Credit Repair Program A – $125 Down / $125 – 30 Days Later

Over the last few weeks I have settled several accounts for my clients with debt collection companies but I’ve noticed that the debt collection companies are becoming more aggressive with their actions to collect accounts.

One of their tactics is to send documents that seem to threaten the debtor with harsh legal action if they don’t pay up. From my experience the debt collection companies must have learned some new tactics to scare debtors into paying.

Debt collection companies can’t outright threaten to do things to you such as: put you in jail, get you fired from your job or embarrass you by calling your neighbors.


But they can send frightening documents that give you the feeling that they are going to get you in trouble some how.

Remember the job of the debt collection companies is to make you get upset and emotional so they can force you into paying more money than you have to.

Debt collection companies rarely pay more than 10% for any account that they purchase so there’s a lot of room for negotiation.


So don’t get upset or afraid of dealing with debt collection companies. Respond to all documents sent to you and request documents from them to validate the debt they are trying to collect from you.

This is probably one of my hottest topics that really gets me steamed when I think, talk or write about it. I’m a family man and I place a great value on protecting my family directly and indirectly.

I’m going to start out by saying that this article really only pertains to men that are of the age of 30 yrs or older married with children. If you are younger this could be a great lesson for you and maybe you might want to take this advice and start earlier if you are married with children.


Due to my business activities I come in contact with at least 300 or more people per week and I directly talk to at least 50 to 75 people one on one. Sometimes these conversations get personal because they are asking my advice for a particular situation that they might be going through.

One of the hottest topics that most of the men that I come in contact with bring up has to deal with “Insurance” in particular “Life Insurance”.

I’ve had some clients ask me should they get Life Insurance and if so how much but also there was a question that I would usually get from some of the men asking me what I think about them leaving their wife all that money if they were to die?

I would then turn that question around on them and ask them how would you feel if something happen to you and you left your wife and children nothing to live on?

The question shouldn’t be what your wife is going to get in terms of money if you died, the question should be am I providing a secure future for my wife and children if something happened to me.


Imagine if you were gone tomorrow how would your wife and children live? How will they pay the mortgage, car note, health insurance, water bill, electric bill, etc. Plus on top of all of that they will be grieving the loss of you.

You need take all that into account when considering Life Insurance. With that understood what type of policies should you be looking into? Well I only recommend Term Life Insurance. Depending upon your health and age you can get a great policy up to $1,000,000 for $60 to $120 per month.

I recommend shopping around for the best offer. Make sure to use established companies and regardless of what the insurance agent says stay away from Whole Life Policies or Payback Investment Type Policies.

I know that if you are really the man of your household you’ll take this advice and immediately protect your families future by having a Term Life Insurance Policy ready to protect them if something was to happen to you.

Q. I file bankruptcy 3 years ago can I file again?

A. I’m not a lawyer but from my research if you’ve filed Chapter 13 Bankruptcy you can convert that to a Chapter 7, but if you’ve already filed a Chapter 7 you’re out of luck.

Q. My credit score is 490 what can I do about that?

A. Your credit score is very important when it comes to borrowing money. If you have a low credit score you’ll pay more for auto loans, mortgages and credit cards. You should focus on cleaning up your credit report.


Get a copy of your report and start working deals with your creditors. If you have accounts that have been sold to collection agencies you should be able to settle those accounts for pennies on the dollar.

Q. My husband wants me to pay all the bills and manage our household, but I don’t like doing it all by myself. What should I do about this?

A. Managing your household and finances should be done as a team. One of you might be in charge of writing the checks and paying the bills but both of you need to know exactly what’s going on with the finances.

Your marriage could be in trouble if you don’t work this out. Your husband might think that your financial situation is better than it really is and he might blame you for miss-managing the money.


Q. How much money should my wife and I be saving for retirement and how can we do it?

A. I would only tell you what my wife and I are doing. You should save at least 20 years worth of retirement funds. So if you earn $100,000 a year you need $2,000,000 if you want to live the same lifestyle. If you earn $20,000 you need to save $200,000.

How should you start to save money…you should start saving a little at a time. Find investments that you feel comfortable with. Mutual funds are a great way to save if you want other people to invest your money.


If you are not comfortable with the stock market you can find other opportunities such as online businesses, storefront businesses or real estate investing. The worse thing you could do is NOTHING!

Every day millions of Americans are going to get a call from someone they didn’t expect to hear from…A Debt Collection Company!

Debt buyers are making millions of dollars buying old debt from credit card companies, creditors and old notes that are owed but not collected for pennies on the dollar.

They are actually turning pennies in to thousands of dollars. They may buy a debt for $50 and settle it with the original debtor for $500. That’s more than a 5000% return on their money.

So if you get a call from a debt collection company you should know that you have certain rights under the law.


1. You have a right to ask the debt collection company to send you a letter about the debt.
2. You have a right to make them validate the debt.

Some things you should be aware of when getting letters from debt collection companies.

1. Check if the debt is past the statute of limitations in your state.
2. Check to see if you might have paid the debt.
3. Check to see if it was a debt that was dismissed and sold to another debt collection company.
4. If you filed bankruptcy make sure it wasn’t a debt that was declared in the bankruptcy.

For some reason debt collection companies have made people believe that they don’t have to prove LEGALLY that they have a right to collect a debt from you.

I think that this is happening because debt collection companies understand that when people are under stress and very emotional they will believe things that are not even true. So they play on your fears and impress upon you that regardless if they have proof or not they can haul you into court and make you pay.

Well I have some news for you…they don’t have the right to haul you into court and make you pay for a debt that they have purchased without also collecting the LEGAL PROOF documenting the debt from the original creditor.


But you might be saying Steve I’ve tried making the debt collector prove the debt and they just laughed and they still took me to court.

Ok…I understand what you’re saying but I want to make it crystal clear about the biggest mistakes most people make when trying to get a debt collection company to prove a debt is valid.

Mistake #1 – when you receive the 30 day letter from the debt collection company telling you that they are attempting to collect a debt. You should immediately respond to that letter before the 30 day period runs out. If you don’t you just validated the debt LEGALLY by not responding or not responding in time.

Mistake #2 - even if the debt collection company disregards your request to validate the debt you must show up in court and make another formal request to the judge. Also make sure you keep a copy of the letter and certified receipt statement from the post office to prove you make the request within the 30 day period allow by law.


This from my personal experience I’ve had clients cases dismissed when they follow this information.

Will you have debt collectors disregard your request? YES
Will you have judges disregard your request? YES

But that’s no reason not to fight! You should use every ounce of the law and if you lose at least you fought.

I’ve also found that when you take the debt collection companies all the way through the legal process they are more willing to settle debt at a lower price if they have validated it.

So keep fighting and don’t give up the worse thing that could happen is you lose your case!

I recently prepared one of my clients to defend himself against a debt collection company that had purchased a debt that was more than 20 years old.

I researched the laws in our state of Wisconsin pertaining to old debt and his debt actually fell under the category of 806.5 Statute of Limitations.

So I prepared him several times at my office for what he could face and I armed him with the law that was on his side.

He presented his side and the judge actually overlooked the law and sided with the debt collection company attorney. In the judges words “the attorney went to school so he must be right”.

This was shocking to my client and he felt like it was a set up from the beginning. After all the judge sees the debt collection company attorney on a daily basis.

So even though the law in our state of Wisconsin clearly states that a debt can only be collected for 20 years max, for the debt to not fall under the statute of limitation the debt collection company or original creditor must ask for an extension.

The debt collection company attorney admitted in his court summons for my client that the original creditor missed the extension date which would have been February 1, 2010 and the date of this court appearance was March 1, 2012.

They were a full 2 years and 1 month past the legal date to ask for an extension of the judgement.

Because I’m not in the court room with my client I don’t know exactly what happened. I’ve had several clients under the same circumstances walk out of court with a full dismissal.

Debt collection companies and judges can be intimidating so my client might have froze up under the pressure.

The original debt from 1991 was $3,100 and the debt collection company wanted $3,000 to settle. We refused that amount and we are currently in negotiations. I’m expecting the settlement to be around $300 to $400.

It’s a Tuesday night and your getting ready to sit down and eat dinner and watch a little TV and the phone rings. You look at the caller ID and it has a funny number (toll-free) and a weird name such as NCR Services.

After a few seconds you decide to answer the phone and you’re shocked when the person on the other line says…”can I speak to John…you say this is John…they say…John this is NCR Services I’m calling about a debt that you owe and I need to know how and when you’re going to pay it.”

This type of call takes you off guard because they sound friendly until they start asking for what they are calling about.


The debt collection company might make all types of threats to sue you or have you arrested. The debt collection company might threaten to call your job and get you in trouble with your boss.

If you don’t have the money to settle the account you will just start to avoid their calls. So every time you see that funny phone number on the caller ID you just ignore it and you tell everyone else in your home not to answer calls from that phone number.

The debt collection companies actually have you in their trap when you start to avoid their calls because without knowing it you’ve verified that the debt they are trying to collect is valid.


Step by Step How To Make Debt Collection Companies Stop Calling…
1. When you receive a call from the debt collection company have them send you what they are requesting in writing.

2. When you receive the letter from them IMMEDIATELY send a letter stating that you want proof to validate the debt they are trying to attempt to collect. For more information on that (Validate Debt)

3. With in your response letter asking for them to validate the debt they are trying to collect you also inform them that you would only like them to contact you in writing and that any communication by phone to your home, work or neighbors would be considered harassment.


4. You must send this back to them “Certified Mail – signature required”.

9 times out of 10 debt collections companies will either just go away or stop calling because they understand that you’ve put them on notice and that you’ve documented that they have been put on notice.