Credit Options? What Are They?

1. You can simply not pay anyone.  The credit remains on your credit reports for an average of seven years.  In the meantime you cannot get anyone to give you credit and may get liens, judgments or garnishments attached to you.  This is not something that is an absolute but chances are at least one of these things will be done by your creditors.  The good news is there is no such thing as a debtors prison any more.  Some people are forced in to this decision and it is an option even if you are not forced in to it.
2. You can go to a Credit Counseling Service.  A credit counseling service is a company "either non profit or for profit" and in either working for your creditors or for the credit bureaus ninety percent of the time.  They are not working for you nor do they have you as a priority.  The goal of a consumer credit counseling service is to get as much money from you that can be paid to your creditors.  Yes they can lower the payments on a lot of your credit accounts.  They can maybe even have the creditor stop charging huge interest rates but they cannot help your credit reports.  In order to the non profit companies to stay in business they must get money from some place.  If you seen where they pay checks were coming from you would probably find your creditors on the list.  So ... looking at it from a consumer counseling point of view ... they must do what the creditors want them to or they will not get money.  This is not where most of you would want to be since paying off accounts that are in bad shape does not make one bit of difference to the way your credit reports look and your credit scores show.  In our opinion why would you even pay the creditor at all?  Think about it ... you have bad credit and you have a balance owed it scores against you as a negative 9.  Now you pay the bad credit and you don't have a balance owed but you still have negative 9.  Isn't it better to keep your money in your pocket and have the negative 9?
3. You can file a bankruptcy chapter 7 or chapter 13.  Filing bankruptcy is much like going to a consumer credit counseling only in this instance you have the protection of the court.  No creditor can continue collecting from you, harassing you nor can they place liens or judgments against you once you file.  The best part is you have no debt.  This is not to say your reports are going to clean themselves up you will still need to clean up your reports but once the reports are clean you will score very good and can get back to a normal life.  MORE ABOUT BANKRUPTCY
4. You can clean up your reports yourself or hire a company to do it for you.  Credit repair and restoration is not for everyone ... for instance if you really need to file a bankruptcy first then credit repair would not be good until after you file, once you file then you are back on the road to having good credit. 
   MORE ABOUT SELF HELP CREDIT REPAIR
   MORE ABOUT FULL CREDIT REPAIR

These are the options that you have when you have credit challenged reports but there is always a way out of it.  You must pick the way that is best for you.  Pick a way that gives you at least some protection from your creditors.

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