Debt Elimination Success Seminar
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Section 1
A Look at Debt
History of Debt
Credit Card History
Current State of Debt
How You Got Into Debt
Good Debt Bad Debt
Business vs. Personal Debt
Section 2 Dealing With Your Money
The Two Step Plan
Doing The Two-Step
Step One
Step Two
The Paths Out of Debt
1- Create a Debt Payment Plan
2- Neogtiate Better Rates & Terms
a.Consolidation Loans
b.Consumer Credit Counseling Services
3- Negotiate Lump-Sum Settlements
4- Bankruptcy
5- The Easy Way
6- Win $1,000,000
Living Debt-Free
Manage Your Money
Make More Money
Save Money
SameMoney-MoreFun
Stay Debt-Free
You as a Business
Section 3 Dealing With Your Creditors
Alerts/Scams
The Credit Industry
Credit Industry
The Fine Print
The Secondary Debt Market
The Debt Collection Process
Original Creditor
The Charge-Off
Collection Agency
Legal Problems
Dirty Creditor Tricks
Dealing with Debt Collectors
Dealing with Debt Collectors
Statute of Limitations
Cease and Desist Letter
Section 4
The Credit Report
The Credit Report
Credit Score
Credit Repair
Section 5
Dealing With Yourself
The Critical Factor
The Art of Prosperity
The End of Failure
Prosperity Coaching
Section 6
Kids and Money
Kids and Money
How to Pay for College
Section 7
Debt Information
Bookstore
Debt Facts
Radio Show
Resources
About Us
Privacy Policy
Site Map
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Consumer Credit Counseling Services |
Host: Tom Allen
Guest: Howard Dvorkin from Consolidated Credit Counseling Services
Segment 1
Tom: I’m Tom Allen, and I hate debt. I invite you to make the decision today to join with me in living a debt-free and prosperous life. Just how much do you owe? The average household’s personal debt is almost $85,000. Now if you include your share of the government’s debt, it’s almost half a million dollars. But no matter how much you owe, there is help available. Howard Dvorkin from Consolidated Credit Counseling Services is here to help you understand and get rid of your debt. Howard, Consolidated Credit Counseling Services is one of the largest and most respected debt relief companies in the country, but I would like to start by finding out a little bit more about you. Why did you become interested in helping people with their debt problems?
Howard: When I started Consolidated Credit Counseling, it was to help people because I saw a great need in the financial arena for people who really couldn’t afford professional services. I was practicing as a CPA, Certified Public Accountant, notice I said practicing…
Tom: Practicing to practice.
Howard: Practicing but I never really practiced to get really good at it—I’m just kidding (laughs). But there was certainly a need. During the ‘80s, I was doing a lot of real estate, and towards the end of the ‘80s, I did a lot of restructuring for my real estate clients, with the S&L crisis, and there I learned a lot about bankruptcy. And when I started to look at it, and look at the way credit cards affected people, and what they did, and then I also saw a great need that wasn’t being serviced. The common guy could not afford the best possible services and advice out there.
Tom: So if you had a lot of money, you had no problem getting good advice.
Howard: Absolutely, you could pay anybody. But obviously, for people in debt, that’s not the reality for them. So I looked at the competition that was out there, and I saw that it was mostly social services agencies rendering advice, which did a great job, but unfortunately, there was a three-month waiting list to get into their offices. And at that time, Tom, and frankly even today—this is 14 years later—three months is an awful long time to be in debt; a lot of things can happen.
Tom: A lot of collector phone calls.
Howard: A lot of phone calls, a lot of possible attorney letters, possibly attorney actions, and then possibly filing bankruptcy. So there was a great need out there that wasn’t being met. Now it’s been a wild ride since we started and the debt consolidation field had changed quite dramatically. I think sometimes for the better, and sometimes for the worse. But at the same time, there is still a lot people who need a lot of help and a lot of guidance, and quite frankly, there’s a lot of good information out there. The internet has provided the access to that information, but the willingness needs to come from the individual in order to learn and change their habits. I think you would agree with me that the only way people are going to get out of debt is if they make changes in their life.
Tom: Well certainly the only way they are going to stay out of debt. You could get out of debt by declaring bankruptcy, but if you don’t change your habits and patterns, and how you even think and feel about money, you’re most likely to repeat your old habits and get back into the same situation.
Howard: Absolutely, and it happens time and time again. You’re able to go through and get out of debt in a number of ways: bankruptcy is one, but also they could refinance their house—but you only could do that one or two times before you run out of house.
Tom: (laughs)
Howard: And the key is, when you go through that, and unfortunately we see this more times than not, is if you do pay off your debts refinancing your house, you have to make darn sure that you close out those credit cards.
Tom: That’s the number one key, as far as I’m concerned, in getting out of debt. Stop creating new debt.
Howard: If you’re trying to, even if you’re on a good payment plan and you’re by yourself, doing it yourself, or switching credit cards around or debts around to lower interest-bearing accounts, or using the services of a credit counseling agency such as Consolidated Credit, you have to stop using it because if you are paying down on one side and charging up on the other, you’ve gotten nowhere.
Tom: Right. Now I’m quite interested in the fact that you have been in the business now for 14 years, and I want to know your perceptions of the current state of debt. Is it getting worse? It seems to me that it’s getting worse, but you may have an even better perspective than I do.
Howard: I believe it is getting worse, Tom. I think right now, we are even feeling that the economy is coming back, and there’s a lot of money out on the market, because of the refinancing of houses. Unfortunately, I think it’s partially affecting our psyche, meaning that people have gone through and, with low interest rates, refinanced their houses or bettered their overall financial practice, but how they did that was taking on loans. That’s great, but a lot of these loans that happen unfortunately went through and are balloon loans—within five years they will require a one-time payment—and will burst, unfortunately, as a balloon does, and a couple of years down the road, these people are going to be required to refinance their houses at much higher interest rates. That has alleviated people temporarily, by allowing them to pay off their credit cards. But as I said before, they left those credit cards open and are starting to charge on them again. Old habits are very very hard to break, as I’m sure you know. So I think the current state of debt is that, if you look at all the indications, we are getting worse, not better. As time goes on, we are becoming more and more a cashless society and it is too easy to whip out the credit card.
Tom: We are becoming very detached from the money transaction.
Howard: Absolutely. There is no psychological effect—there’s no green stuff going through your hands!
Tom: Exactly.
Howard: When people go out, it’s cool. You whip out your credit card, fine, that’s all great stuff. But fortunately, when you actually have to part yourself from that green stuff, that cash, you don’t want to let it go, you’ve worked too hard for that. It’s a psychological thing going on. And I think that’s part of the problem. The other problem, I think, in society, is that there just isn’t enough personal financial education out there.
Tom: There’s very little.
Howard: Very little. And frankly, it should be required in every high school for graduating seniors, because unfortunately, the education system is such that the teachers think the parents are teaching the kids about financial issues, and the parents think the teachers are teaching the kids about financial issues, but unfortunately—
Tom: Neither one of them knows much about it to begin with.
Howard: --the parents are in worse shape than the kids! (laughs) So it’s a very scary thing. The other thing is, there are products available out there—and I’m sure you know where I’m going to go—there are products that teach kids how to use credit cards. The Visa Bucks program which is a horrible program…
Tom: Howard, when we come back in our next segment, we are going to find out how Consolidated Credit Counseling Services can help us get and stay out of debt. So everyone stay tuned. Howard Dvorkin from Consolidated Credit Counseling Services will be right back with us. For more information on getting and staying out of debt, visit IHateDebt.com.
Consumer Credit Counseling Services
Listen to the I Hate Debt Radio show interview withHoward Dvorkin from Consolidated Credit Counsleing Services The Current State of Debt
CareOne Consumer Credit Counseling Services
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