Be Careful!

In this economy, we hear a lot about things like debt consolidation. But you have to be so careful when you're dealing with that kind of thing. You have to know where your debt consolidation is coming from. If you don't believe me, then read this story carefully - it's a true story. It happened to one of my friend's and her husband.

My friend and her husband obtained a debt consolidation loan through one of the umpteen services that showed up at the beginning of this century. They had about $650 a month automatically debited from their checking account, which was then broken down by the company and filtered out to the various bills on the consolidation loan. This worked beautifully until about 2003. Then the whole thing went to pot.

Friend's husband is in the military. He went overseas and she went home to Iowa. While in Iowa, she noticed her monthly amount of money was bigger, but attributed it to hazard and seperation pay for her hubby being overseas, and so did her hubby. They couldn't have been more wrong. You see, they asked me to check the mail at their house in Texas. So I did. And I started noticing statements coming from credit cards I knew were in that consolidation. I kept telling friend that she was getting that stuff, but friend didn't listen. Then I finally opened one of them and read it to her. That's when she found out.

The feds had shut down the debt consolidation service she had used. None of those bills were getting paid anymore. In fact, the service hadn't even been able to inform customers they'd been shut down. Friend found out when she went to the website and there was a message there about it. They ended up in bankruptcy because they just couldn't pull themselves back up.

So please, if you go the debt consolidation route, make sure you know where your loan is coming from.