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Parenting

How Credit Card Debt Relief Programs Work

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Your credit card usage has driven you into a financial ditch, eh? You’re not alone. Americans owe nearly $900 billion to card issuers, according to a WalletHub study, with the average household balance at $7,519. That’s a lot of swiping. The good news is that debt relief can help you. Here’s how credit card debt relief programs work.

What is Debt Relief?

In a nutshell, the approach makes it easier for you to lower your debt burden. That can be through numerous ways including debt consolidation, debt settlement, interest rate reductions and repayment term changes.

Who is Debt Relief For?

You’re likely a prime candidate if you’re delinquent on your plastic or loan payments or have mulled bankruptcy. Also, depending on the option you choose, debt relief may work if you’re not yet late on payments, but you’ve been cutting it close. Another chief reason people cite for using debt relief is that they’ve tried to manage their obligations on their own but cannot make progress.

Be mindful, though, that the financial strategy may not be a good fit if won’t commit to a long-term plan for paying off your debt, or if your spending is still unchecked.

Debt Settlement

Credit card debt relief programs include debt settlement. Here, you hire an accredited company such as Freedom Debt Relief to negotiate with your credit card issuers or other unsecured creditors to get them to allow you to pay just a portion of your total obligation to clear your debt. Because creditors know your next step could be bankruptcy, they usually go along. How it works is, rather than pay creditors directly, you put funds each month into an escrow-type account that you’ll use as settlement leverage. When you’ve saved enough, negotiations will begin, and settlement funds are derived from your account. Oh, and you don’t pay anything until your debts are settled.  

Debt Consolidation

Debt consolidation allows you to roll high-interest debt, particularly credit card debt, into a single payment with less interest. This allows you to save money and streamline payments, since you’ll have only one to monthly bill to cover. That’s as opposed to multiple payments of varying amounts and due dates. You can consolidate through a personal loan or what’s called a balance transfer card. With the latter, you can shift your high-interest card balances onto one of those promotional 0%-interest cards that companies sometimes issue. You’ll need to clear the account before the promotional period ends, though, and the rate shoots back up. You will need fairly good credit for consolidation to work or even make sense.

Credit Counseling

Certified credit counselors can go over your situation and help you produce a plan for managing your debts and spending. This approach might work if you simply need a doable debt repayment plan. You’ll also come away with new knowledge about finances and budgeting. Such services usually come free with nonprofit credit counseling agencies. Just make sure your agency is accredited with the Financial Counseling Association of America or the National Foundation for Credit Counseling. 

Debt Management

If your debt woes are too severe, your credit counselors may suggest that you go the debt management route. What happens is, you pick which debt to enroll in the debt management plan (DMP), and you’ll make just one monthly payment to the plan. That payment is allocated to your creditors, according to plan terms. With a DMP, you also may get a better rate or have some fees waived.
Now you know a bit more about how credit card debt relief programs work. The strategy is a proven one, particularly if you pick an established, accredited and reputable company to help you.

Life, Lifestyle, Tips

Burnt Out and Overwhelmed? Having a Poor Business Structure May Be the Reason

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Everyone has heard the advice that it’s better to work smart than to work hard, but many business owners assume it doesn’t apply to them. More often than not, they assume that working 60-hour weeks and finding themselves constantly busy is a sign that their companies are becoming more successful. Unfortunately, constant work can leave entrepreneurs feeling burnt out and overwhelmed, and poor business structures are the most common underlying cause of this problem.

The Importance of Delegation

Delegating tasks to competent employees or third-party contractors is the best way to improve a business structure and reduce stress, but few business owners know how to do this effectively. Those who find themselves stuck doing too many tasks that fall outside the purview of general managers need to recognize the problem before they can make any changes.

To get an idea of whether this is a real problem, keep track of 100% of the time spent at work for one to two weeks. Analyze the resulting timesheet to see how most of that time is getting spent. If most of the tasks on the list are things that business owners don’t enjoy and aren’t very good at, it’s time for them to start finding ways to delegate those responsibilities.

Making Use of Outside Resources

Some tasks can be delegated effectively to existing employees. Others are best left to outside specialists. Bookkeeping Services are a perfect example.

Most small to mid-sized companies don’t have it in the budget to hire full-time bookkeepers. Instead, business owners either take on this work themselves or delegate it to managers who don’t have the specialized training required to do the work well.

Not all tasks can be delegated to just any employee. Delegating tasks to employees who don’t have the skills to complete them efficiently can still create extra work for business owners since they’ll have to check every step of their managers’ work for accuracy. It makes far more sense to hire an outside specialist.

Stop Making Excuses

Many business owners put off changing the structure of their companies until they are already overworked and overwhelmed, making up excuses about why they should be doing 100% of the work themselves. Being too busy all the time is not a sign of success, but of poor business structure, and making excuses for it can hold business owners and their companies back from reaching their full potential.

Try a Stress Test

It’s common for business owners at successful, growing companies to assume that their companies could not survive for even a moment without them. Sometimes, unfortunately, that’s true. A company that can’t operate for even a week without the business owner at the helm is not structured correctly, and things will only get worse for the already overworked owner as it continues to grow.

To see if the company’s organizational structure is up to snuff, put it through a stress test by taking some time off. Aim for at least a week of no contact. Take a vacation and avoid taking a single email or call, and see what happens. If things keep running smoothly without the business owner at the helm, that’s a good sign that the company’s organizational structure is solid.

The Bottom Line

Everyone from office workers to business owners deserves to have a life outside of work. For the average employee, managing work-life balance is relatively easy since the entire company’s success does not rest on his or her shoulders. While business owners inevitably have more responsibilities than the typical office worker, they still deserve to get enough time off to have meaningful lives outside of work. Restructuring can help them avoid burnout without risking damage to the company’s bottom line.

Life, Tips

4 Smart Tips For a More Secure Financial Future

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It would be nice if we could sleepwalk our way into a secure financial future, but alas, that’s not the case. If you want your money situation to be bright in the future, then you’ll need to work for it. The good news is that while there are, of course, many difficult aspects when it comes to managing finances, there are always plenty of useful tips that’ll push you in the right direction. In this blog, we’re going to look at some of the best tips that anyone can take on board.

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Avoid Lifestyle Inflation

You’ll probably naturally accumulate more money as you go through life. People generally don’t stay earning the same money they were earning at 18; they step up. The issue is that their lifestyle usually creeps up, too. If you get a raise but then increase the quality of your lifestyle at the same time, then you won’t really get the benefits. There’s little financial advantage of earning $4000 more each year if you increase your lifestyle by $4000. You’ll just end up with more belongings, which improve your lifestyle but which don’t improve your financial standing. Avoiding lifestyle inflation can be a little difficult, but it’s far from impossible. It just requires a little conscious thought.

Get What’s Rightfully Yours

There’s a lot of money in the world. And the truth is that you may be eligible for more of it than you realize. For example, there may be tax credits that you qualify for, which would reduce the size of your tax bill. These are there for a reason, so make sure you’re making the most of them! And what about if you’re in an accident that wasn’t your fault? In that case, you shouldn’t be responsible for paying all the related bills. Instead, you should work with catastrophic injury attorneys and fight for justice. It doesn’t matter if the amount of money that you’re essentially “leaving on the table” is big or small — the fact is, it’s yours, so you should claim it! Getting in touch with an attorney will help you fight for the rights of your loved one as well. It will ensure you get the claim they are entitled to; get more information here.

Invest In Yourself

You don’t know for sure what’s going to happen in the future. All you can do is ensure that you’re well-prepared to handle whatever comes your way. Let’s think about your job, for instance. Is it guaranteed that it’ll still be around in a decade or so down the line? You can make sure that it will still exist by investing in yourself today and making yourself indispensable to your company. People are usually happy to splash the cash on vacations and fancy meals and so on, but they’re (comparatively) “dead money.” By investing in yourself, you might just find that something magical grows.

Every Little Helps

Finally, remember that every little helps when it comes to your finances. Saving a little extra each month can make a massive difference to your finances, especially when you multiply that figure by, say, twenty years or more. Build good habits, and eventually, you’ll see that good things come your way.