How to Reduce Your Debt with a Debt Management Plan

Getting Out of Debt For Dummies

Your debt counselor may recommend a debt management plan to help you to pay off your obligations if reducing your expenses and making more money are not possible. Many creditors offer special concessions to consumers who pay off their bills through a debt management plan. When you participate in a debt management plan, the counselor tries to negotiate smaller monthly payments with your creditors.

Creditors who participate with consumers in a debt management plan expect consumers not to incur additional debt while they are in their plans.

The counselor determines exactly how much you can afford to pay to your unsecured creditors each month in order to eliminate each debt over a three- to five-year period. Then the counselor contacts the creditors to find out if they will agree to let you pay the amounts you can afford. In some instances, the counselor may also ask the creditors for other concessions, such as lowering your interest rates and reducing or waiving any fees you may owe to them.

Beware of credit counseling agencies that spend little or no time evaluating your finances before advising you to enroll in a debt management plan or that ask you to begin paying on a debt management plan before your creditors have agreed to work with you.

If your unsecured creditors believe that giving you what you need is in their best interests, they will probably agree to the credit counselor’s proposal.

After the credit counselor has prepared your final debt management plan

Ask for a copy.
Do not sign it until you have read it carefully, understand everything in it, and are sure that you can live up to it.
Note any restrictions in the plan. It may prohibit you from taking on additional credit with your current creditors or applying for new credit while it is in effect. If you violate any aspect of your plan, you risk having it cancelled.
Verify that the plan says you will receive monthly updates on the status of your debt management plan, including confirmation that each of your creditors was paid according to the terms of the plan

When your plan is official, you pay your credit counselor the amount of money you have agreed to pay on your debts and the required monthly fee. In turn, the counselor pays your creditors.

Some creditors who agree to be part of your plan may report you as slow paying or as paying through a debt management plan, which will damage your credit history a little. However, statistics show that successfully completing a debt management plan actually increases your FICO score.

About This Article

About the book author:

John Ventura: John is a best-selling author and a nationally boardcertified bankruptcy attorney. He is also an adjunct professor at the University of Houston Law School and the director of the Texas Consumer Complaint Center at the Law School.
As a young boy, John dreamed of becoming a Catholic priest so he could help everyday people, and he spent his high school years in a Catholic seminary. After graduating, however, John decided to achieve his dream by combining journalism with the law. Therefore, he earned an undergraduate degree in journalism and a law degree from the University of Houston Law School. Later, he and a partner established a law firm in Texas, building it into one of the most successful consumer bankruptcy firms in the state. He subsequently began a successful consumer law firm in South Texas.
Today, as Director of the Texas Consumer Complaint Center, he supervises law students as they help consumers with their legal problems. He is also a regular speaker at law conferences around the country and serves on the Bankruptcy Council for the Texas Bar Association.
John is the author of 13 books on consumer and small business legal matters, including Law For Dummies, 2nd edition; The Everyday Law Kit For Dummies; Divorce For Dummies, 2nd edition; and Good Advice for a Bad Economy (Berkeley Books). John has been interviewed about consumer money matters by numerous national media including CNN, NBC, NPR, Bloomberg Television & Radio, The Wall Street Journal, USA Today, Newsweek, Kiplinger’s Personal Finance, Money, Inc. Martha Stewart’s Living, Bottomline, Entrepreneur, Bankrate.com, CBSMarketWatch.com, and MSNMoney.com. In addition, his comments and advice have appeared in major newspapers around the country, and he has been a frequent guest on local radio programs.

Mary Reed: Mary Reed is a personal finance writer who has coauthored or ghostwritten numerous books on topics related to consumer money matters and legal rights. The books she has coauthored with John Ventura include The Everyday Law Kit for Dummies, Divorce For Dummies, and Good Advice for a Bad Economy (Berkeley Books). Mary has also written for the magazines Good Housekeeping, Home Office Computing, and Small Business Computing, and she has ghostwritten numerous articles that have appeared in national and local publications.
Mary is also the owner of Mary Reed Public Relations (MR•PR), an Austin, Texas-based firm that provides public relations services to a wide variety of clients, including authors, publishers, attorneys, financial planners, healthcare professionals, retailers, hotels, restaurants, and nonprofits.
Prior to starting her public relations business and writing career 20 years ago, she was vice president of marketing for a national market research firm, marketing director for a women’s healthcare organization, and public relations manager for Texas Monthly, a national award-winning magazine. She received her MBA from Boston University and her BA from Trinity University in Washington, DC.
In her free time, Mary serves on the board of a community development corporation in her neighborhood. She also enjoys long morning bike rides, road trips with her husband, gardening, working her way through the stack of books by her bed, taking care of her six cats, and spending time with her family and many friends.