How A Counseling Session Happens

Once you take the time to call a debt management counselor, they will work with  you closely.  You will come in to a meeting with them.  Bring your identification,  your checkbook and any bills you have.  The first step in the process is to  develop a budget.  The budget gives the debt management professional the ability  to determine how much money you can afford to pay on a monthly basis to those who  you owe money to.  The budget also puts you in line in terms of how you can spend  your money.  Once a budget is formulated, the next step is to determine if you can  go on.

 

Not everyone will qualify for debt management.  If you do not make enough money to  cover your expenses, there is no point in continuing the process since you will not have enough money to pay your lenders.  The counselor may advice you to file  bankruptcy or to increase your income to better qualify for counseling services.  Those that do qualify will move on to the next step in which the credit counselor  will call each of your lenders and determine what the least amount of money they  will take is to pay off your debt on a monthly basis.  Once they've worked with  each of the lenders (hopefully reducing the total amount you owe) they will then  work with you to set up an automatic payment amount.  Each month on the same day,  a set amount of money will be withdrawn from your checking or savings account  automatically.