Consumer Credit Counseling

If you're able to pay your bills and are current on all your accounts, you almost certainly don't need credit counseling. If your interest rates are too high, you usually can negotiate a lower rate with your credit-card companies just by asking -- or threatening to move your account elsewhere.

Here's when you might think about full-scale Consumer Counseling Credit:

• You can't pay the minimums on your credit cards.

• You're consistently late paying one or more of your regular bills.

• You're being hounded by creditors and collection agencies.

• Your efforts to work out reasonable repayment plans with your creditors have failed.

Be warned: If you're too far in debt, Consumer Counseling Credit may not be able to help. There are limits to how little your creditors will accept, and a credit counseling service may not be able to cut your payments enough to either give you breathing room or get you out of debt. If that's true, debt settlement or bankruptcy may be the best of bad options.

Your payments also shouldn't stretch on for years. The typical debt management plan takes two to four years to complete. Responsible credit counselors say debt settlement is usually the better option if the repayment would take more than five years.