In many cases when you borrow money you sign a contract agreeing to settle your debt through debt arbitration instead of through the court system. This is much cheaper because court fees and attorney fees can be avoided for both you and the lender. You may still find yourself in court depending on your situation, but still have the option of arbitration if the judge sees fit. You will need significant proof that you have been making payments on your debt and both you and the creditor has to agree on this as a solution.

Over the years debt arbitration has gained popularity among creditors, even though its main goal is to help debtors. The reason for this is because creditors usually recover more of their money than other debt collection methods. This does not mean it is not a great solution for you, actually it works great for all parties. Debt negotiators already have relationships with creditors making it easier for them to negotiate a lower percentage on your debt, you end up paying much less on a debt you want to pay off while avoiding filing for bankruptcy and creditors get to collect on the debt without all the expenses. If you have a huge outstanding debt and is on the edge of bankruptcy credit card debt arbitration may be the solution you need. Consult a debt negotiator and find out what help he/she can provide.

HOW IT WORKS.

First you should save a little backup just in case you hit a bump down the road you can continue making your payments on time. About 2 months of all you minimum payments combined and the current bill you are working on.

Make a list of all your bills and depending on which method you chose place them in lowest amount owed first or highest interest first. Start paying all the minimum payments on all you debts except the first one on you list. Take all the money you have from paying only the minimum payments on the rest of your bills and any extra you can come up with every month and pay off the first bill. After the first debt is paid move on to the next one on your list. Add all the money you use to pay on the first bill to the minimum payment you are paying on this bill until it is paid off. Continue the process until all your debts are paid in full.

As you can see, it is like a snow ball rolling down a hill. The best part of the debt snowball is that you can see your progress as you finish paying of a debt. This will help to keep you motivated through out the entire process.

It has been less than 7 years since people were terrified to use their credit cards to make purchases online. Now people are divulging there credit card information for the fun it. While I can see the benefit in sharing your information with sites like mint and yodlee which helps many people, I can not see any good in sharing your sensitive information with site like these. I will be the first to say that sharing personal financial information will shape up to be a dangerous trend if more sites like this start to pop up. I am sure that they are doing their best to protect your information, but why take the risk? Credit is not something you can clear up over night, it take years to fix even the smallest mistakes.

The world wide web only have a handful of original sites and the other umpteen billion are just copies, so I am sure there will be at least a few more sites like this in the future. Don’t get me wrong, I’m all for technology, but it has to have a purpose. As far as I can tell, this site is just for you to show off to your friends and complete strangers. Well, I hope that I am wrong about this trend thing, but only time can tell.

I try to give the best advice on debt and managing your money on this site and your financial information should be kept on a need to know basis. Identity theft is a real problem and destroys lives on a daily basis. The risk is far too great, just be giving out such sensitive financial information willy-nilly (Always wanted to use that in a article). That is my opinion anyway, maybe you guys see it in a different light.

Ridiculouslyextraordinary.com is a blog that a came across for the first time today. I am still not completely sure what it’s about, but I read a post on it that really had an impact on me. Here is my little story.

Let me start at the beginning. I have been having writers block for the last few days and have only completed 2 articles within that time. These articles took me more than 6 hours apiece to complete and I had to force them out onto the paper. Now, I came across this post on achieving goals and after reading it my writers block was gone (Took me 20 minutes to write this). I am not sure why it went away, but I am sure that the article had a lot to do with it.

Why am I talking about writing on a personal finance site? Well, because the advice in the article should be applied to every part of life especially your finances. If we just do what we have to, even if we had to force our way through it, we would be better for it. “ No matter what you want to do in life you can always make an excuse not to do it.” This is so true when the oh-so-boring subject of finance is at hand. I know many of you want to take control of your money and all you really have to do is… “Just do it.” Call the credit card company and negotiate a better rate, sit down and make a realistic budget (even if it take all day), take the time to learn about investing or what ever it is you want to do.

We love movies because we know that they will have a good ending, but in almost every movie there is a struggle. The character has to go through some crazy fight or something emotional to get to the good ending. What if they just quit 15 minutes into the movie? What if Neo had just walked out when Morpheus offered the red and blue pills? The point I’m taking so long to make is, I order to enjoy the being debt free, we have to just do what it take to get there. That is it, just do it!

Read the article on Ridiculously Extraordinary it’s short, but inspiring and this is what I have tried to build jinij around.