With every credit card statement or bill you get in the mail, there is always a box that tells you the minimum amount due. It may seem that that amount is the least you can pay because the credit card company likes you and wants to be nice. No, the minimum amount due is what they WANT YOU TO PAY or hope you pay so that they can make the most money possible in interest from you.

Credit card companies make money by the outlandishly high interest rates they charge you. While you can only get about 1% interest if you put your money in a bank CD or a Treasury Bill, the credit card companies are very happy to charge you rates of 18% and higher. This is where they make their money and they want you to owe them as much as possible at all times. The more you owe them, the more money they make in interest as long as you keep on a schedule of paying them a little at a time.

It will take you many years to get out of debt if you only pay the minimum due every month. You HAVE to figure out a way to pay off more unless you want to be owing them money perhaps for the rest of your life.

The chart below shows the number of years it takes to pay off different amounts of credit and the chart is based on 19% interest along with a minimum monthly amount of just 2.1% of the outstanding balance. Remember, credit cards usually require low monthly minimums of between 2.0% and 2.5% of the outstanding balance because they WANT you to only pay that much. You need to fool them and pay more if you want to be successful at erasing your debt.  

How to enroll in an online debt relief program

At first, you need to fill out an online form. Then, a consultant (on behalf of the debt relief company) will call you for a free session in order to assess your financial situation. After assessing, the consultant may suggest a debt settlement program if it is the best suitable option for you.

What happens in a settlement program?

As you enroll in a debt settlement program, the debt negotiator (on behalf of the company) will start communicating with your creditors to reduce the total amount you owe. In the meantime, you will have to deposit a monthly amount into your settlement account with which you can pay your creditors as soon as they agree upon a pay off amount.

It may happen that an online debt consolidation and settlement company offers a consolidation program to you if it is suitable for your financial condition. It is advantageous over settlement as consolidation has a positive effect on your credit report.

What happens in a consolidation program?

In a consolidation program, the debt consultant (on behalf of the company) will negotiate with your creditors to reduce the interest rate of your loans/debts. With your creditors’ approval, he/she will also decide upon a monthly payment that you need to pay towards your debts. After you make the payment, the company will distribute it amongst your creditors.

It is quite important to choose a good online debt consolidation and settlement company to pay off your dues. Therefore, check its membership with TASC along with checking the company’s reputation from BBB (Better Business Bureau) to know whether or not there are any complaints against the consolidation and settlement company.

Knowing this, many online grant companies sprung up with offers to help you get a grant. Because government grants are so complicated and confusing for the average person, they could get away with charging money for something that you could find for free on the Internet. Now, some of these online grant companies were outright frauds and provided nothing while others were a little more legitimate and did give you some information and help.

The fact is that there is no government grant you can get just because you are in debt and need money. That’s not what grants are for even though some people may have been led to believe that. Grants are there to get money to institutions, businesses, colleges, and charities that need money for a specific prupose that will supposedly help society. That’s what the original goal was anyway.

If you want to find all the information you need about grants and find it for free you can go to the government’s website Grants.gov. There is no need to pay someone for this information as it is there for everyone and anyone who wants it. Now, you might be confused by all the choices, application processes, and all the other hoops that you need to jump through to apply for a grant. If you feel you need someone to help you out in that area, to guide you so to speak, then you might consider finding one of the legitimate grant companies that can walk you through.

If you want government debt relief, you might look into finding some of the government programs that are designed to help you understand debt, learn how to manage it, and point you to some debt counseling services. Debt relief grants from the government (and from Obama) that will magically eliminate your debt you won’t find. But you can find some programs that will educate you and start you on the road to better credit and less debt.

Unfortunately, reality is much different from that hope. While people continue to look for magical free money and free debt relief grants to get their lives turned around, they are finding that not much has changed at all. Well, the government has gotten bigger but it hasn’t gotten better.

The stimulus money was and is a mammoth outlay of cash but it didn’t go to people like you and me. It went to businesses, organizations, state and local governments, and other groups who knew how to apply for it. None of it went to ordinary folks as a hand out like some people hoped. Obama debt relief is there for some who know how to play the system but not for regular people.

There was some mortgage assistance for some families but not for others and again, you had to qualify for it and know how to get it. Many families found out they didn’t qualify for the mortgage help and where quite upset.

The moral of all this is that if you think you are going to be getting debt relief help from the government you might be waiting a very long time. The government is not going to help you in most cases, it is just going to feed off you to become bigger and more controlling. Government debt relief is a myth, plain and simple. There is only one way to become debt free and that is to spend less than you bring in. You have to learn to save and start paying down your debt one dollar at a time. The sooner you stop hoping to win the lottery or get help from the government, the sooner you will be on your way to financial freedom.

Not everybody is in debt though and that is because many people don’t buy things unless they have the money to pay for it. It used to be that cash was king and people payed for things by reaching in their pocket for the money or they wrote a check. This meant they were never spending money they didn’t already have.

It is so easy nowadays to pay for everything with the credit card. Almost all shops and restaurants take it and just carrying a credit card is easier than dealing with cash. However, paying thing with a card has obviously not been working for many people as they continue to charge things that they can’t afford and don’t have the money for.

Of course big ticket items like houses, cars, and boats will be financed by credit more times than not but that is not what we are talking about here. People who are deep in debt and looking for debt relief grants have most often gotten there one small purchase at a time. They start off debt free but through the years they just keep on charging that card and end up with so much high interest credit card debt that they are then forced to contemplate bankruptcy.

One of the ways you can prevent this from happening is to change your spending habits. If you make it a rule to not buy anything unless you have the cash, you will be forcing yourself to cut back and show some self restraint. That means cash for all items including that $1,000 flat screen television you want and the Wii game console to go along with it. Make a new rule in 2010 that in order to buy something, you must first save up the money to buy it. Then when you have enough, you can pay cash for it or write a check.

If you make this new pledge to wait to buy things until you have the cash, you will get a good feeling inside that you have earned the item. This will allow you to enjoy it even more and it will also put the breaks on your out of control spending. You still might need debt relief but at least you will be making a good start to fixing the problem.

If you read it and are able to understand it, the story doesn’t have anything at all to do with Uncle Sam helping with your debt. All it suggests is that you take your tax refund (if you get one) and use it to pay of some of your debt. It then suggests that you reduce your number of  exemptions for this year and take that extra money you will get paid and also put that toward your debt. Wow! Brilliant….not!

Only an idiot will not realize that you aren’t  getting any help here from the government at all. And the one BIG THING WRONG WITH THIS STORY IS THAT PEOPLE IN DEBT GOT THERE BECAUSE THEY LIKE TO SPEND! Very few people in debt are able to take any extra money and save it or put it towards debt because they want that new LED flat screen TV or the newest model of an iPhone! People looking for debt relief grants and other forms of government help are surely not this stupid to have that article actually help them.

Is Stacy Johnson is a real reporter making a living by writing stories like this? Is everyone in America in the first grade? Are we all children and need help figuring out where to find our own money? If so, I need to get a new job as there are more opportunities to take advantage of the clueless than I thought.

There isn’t, to my knowledge, any official government solution or program that will help you with your debt problems. You should try hard to pay cash for things instead of charging them but if you don’t have the cash it is difficult to do.

Empire Debt Relief is a place you can go to find a debt consolidation / settlement company that will help you get back in control of your finances. Often times you can bargain with your creditors and have them forget some of your debt if you have a plan put in place where you will pay the rest. It is a good idea to have a company who knows how to do this for you so that you can get your life back and move toward becoming debt free. - Empire Debt Relief

President Obama was thought by many to have put forward some new programs that would help the poor and give financial aid to those that needed it. Although there was never any concrete evidence of this, many people voted for him in hopes this was true.

2010 brings a new year and new hope for many that are in debt and looking for relief. It is unfortunate though, that there are no new debt relief grants that have been been initiated this year. If you are in debt right now, there is nothing new for you in 2010 that wasn’t already there in 2009.

While people search for debt relief grants and information online, it is unknown to them that there is really no grant available from the government that is specifically given for the purpose of getting you out of debt. The government is not in the business of giving charity to people who have credit problems, at least it shouldn’t be.

Many people do, however, get grants for other purposes and then use them to pay off debt. Governement grants can be obtained for many different purposes and some people are able to qualify for a grant and then decide to use it to pay off their debt.

If you haven’t started already, there is no better time than now to start saving money and working towards being debt free. Just don’t count on the government to help you do it though.

The reasons for the nation’s high debt are many and include the mentality that credit and debt are normal. If you think that everyone else is in debt and that is the only way to buy things, then it is easier to explain away your own debt problems. The more people that are in debt, the more “normal” and accepted it becomes.

The problem is that debt is real and if you have high debt, it is your problem and yours alone. You may lose your house and a lot more if you are not careful. That is what is happening to a lot of people who have high mortgages and suddenly have no way to pay them due to losing a job or some other unfortunate event.

The Rush Card is an option that many people probably wish they had tried before they got into debt. It is a prepaid Visa card that you can’t get into debt trouble with because it is prepaid. Anyone 18 and older can apply and you will NOT BE TURNED DOWN!

You can avoid all the dangers and pitfalls of owning a regular credit card and falling into more and more debt each month. The Rush Card offers you that same credit card convenience but without any interest charges and other charges that can really add up.

If you are a young person who is hoping to avoid the need for debt relief, applying for a Rush Card may be the best choice you can make. Since it is prepaid, you have to wait to get things until you can actually pay for them. This is what more young people need and it will instill in you a good sense of finance and saving that will serve you well later in life.

One big benefit of the Rush Card is that it will help you build up your credit history everytime you use the card to pay your rent, utilities, and other bills. To get this feature you do have to activate it but it is totally optional.

Anyone looking for debt relief grants from the government knows all to well how fast debt can accumulate and how hard it is to pay it off. By using the Rush Card right from the start, you are putting a system in place where you can;t overspend and fall into debt that you will have trouble repaying. If the whole country used Rush Cards instead of their regular credit cards, our economy and job situation would not be in the dire state that it is today!

Obama is many things to many people and he was elected by some in hopes that he would give them money. The stimulus bill was passed and that has led to a rush of people trying to figure out how to get some stimulus grants or stimulus cash. It looks now like there won’t be a stimulus check sent to anyone in 2009 or 2010 as all the money is going to bailing out big business.

For you and I, there is no government program that resembles anything like an Obama no credit check loans plan. Even though you may need a loan for school, housing, medical, or any other reason, there is no government program where you can get a loans without a credit check.

President Obama wants to help the people who need financial aid but there is only so much any politician can do. Good debt management starts individually with everyone and it is not the place of the government to get involved. Unfortunately, many people need government assistance and are hoping to get bailed out just like the big corporations were.