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This short writing will reveal to you some of the problems with credit counseling programs. These are the facts that turn in a drop out rate of over 80% of the clients enrolled in these programs. Debtors should be conscious of these facts before they enroll themselves into a consumer credit counseling program to guarantee themselves they are making a decisive financial move.

1. Most of the consumer credit counseling organizations are started and funded by the actual credit card issuers themselves. They are nothing more than a middle man for the credit card company to collect the debt amount owed.

2. The consumer credit counseling organizations work for and represent the credit card companies; they do not work on behalf of the client. The credit card establishments dictate to the credit counseling company the monthly minimum payment that is required and the interest rate. There is no give and take at all on this.

3. The consumer credit counseling organizations will reduce the APR, however they can never actually reduce the principal balance. The common APR on one of these programs is around 12% which is more in the middle than actually being very low. By not lowering the principal balance they aren't really a method of debt relief, this is just an sped up payment program.

4. You will wind up actually paying more than the original debt amount, due to the monthly fees, interest and lowered monthly payments which greatly bumps up the amount of time you are going to be in debt.

5. It does have a brief bad impact on your credit rating and is made a public record on your credit history, during the time you are in the program.

6. Receiving a mortgage while on a consumer credit counseling program can become enormously difficult, almost impossible.

7. Here is the biggest reason debtors fail and read extremely carefully. If you miss only one payment while on a consumer credit counseling program you will be kicked out of the program and the credit card companies will not allow you to get back into another program for up to a year. Putting your bills to where they were prior to enrolling into the program, high interest and all. This is the number one reason why upwards of 75% of the debtors enrolled in these programs drop out.

Sit back and really think nice and hard about this for a sec. They place you into a consumer credit counseling program that may be up to 5 years or more. As we all know the adventure that is life has its ups and downs. If you find it very tight to be on the program in the first place you will drop off. Any unpredictable financial problems as little or large as they may be could contribute to you going past due just one payment and getting kicked out of the program. You need to seriously think about how secure your finances and income security are before enrolling into a credit counseling program to avoid being part of that 80%. The bottom line is those with a considerable amount of debt such as $20,000 or more should lean more towards credit card debt settlement than credit counseling. Credit counseling is more reasonable for debtors with smaller sums of debt that do not have much of any quarles keeping up to date with their accounts in the first place. If you are seeking for a way to lower your debt and get out of debt fast, then credit counseling is just not for you.