How To Successfully Negotiate A Debt Settlement Yourself
If you are trying to negotiate a debt settlement on your own, and you have never done this before, it might not be the easiest project to accomplish. One of the primary motivations for trying to do this on your own is avoiding the cost of using a professional debt settlement company. Although these experts will be able to help you achieve some sort of settlement in most cases, the amount of money that they charge to get this done may be much more than you want to pay. The savings that you receive from the debt settlement may actually equal the amount the company is charging to help you, thereby making it a bad financial decision on your part to use them. Many people justify the cost of using a debt settlement company because it allows them to take care of this process without any effort of their part. There is nothing to learn, no phone calls to make, and you are more likely to receive a settlement when debt settlement professionals take charge of the situation. However, if you would like to try your hand at settling a debt or two that you owe, here are a couple tips that you can use in order to accomplish this.
An example of how you would approach a lender that you will, or a credit card institution that is demanding all of the money, can be expressed in the following way. The first thing you will want to do is contact the lender to find out exactly how much you owe. You should then ask them if they would be willing to take a lump-sum payment at a discounted rate if you are able to make the payment in the next few days. In most cases, if you are going to pay off the entire debt, this is something that most lending institutions will agree upon. The last thing that they want to do is go to court, and as we all know, going to court can become a very expensive event. Therefore, a motivation that many lenders and credit card companies have for taking discounted rates for the amount of money that they are owed is to avoid paying lawyers. They will definitely consider your offer, and will make counter offers trying to get the most money from you. However, by simply picking up the phone, and making the call and offer, you can save yourself a great deal of money, not only on the debt, but by not paying professionals to help you accomplish this.
If you owe several different lenders, you need to make a spreadsheet of everyone that you owe money to. You could also write this out on a piece of paper, carefully organizing the names, addresses, and phone numbers of the lending institutions you need to contact. Once you have all of this information, you can quickly contact each one of them to negotiate a deal. Lenders are notorious for being ruthless, not wanting to back down or take less money for the debt owed. However, if you are persistent, and they do not want to go to court, they will at least listen to what you have to say before taking the legal route. It really depends upon how much money you actually owe them and whether or not the company will negotiate with those that owe them money.
One final consideration to make when trying to negotiate a settlement with a lender is to try to build some type of rapport with them. If they are sending you notices in the mail, and making frequent phone calls trying to get their money using extremely ruthless tactics, it might not be possible to get on their good side. However, if your lender is willing to listen to what you have to say, and you are civil in all of your conversations, there is a higher probability that negotiating your settlement with the lender will actually occur. You never know how they will respond to debt settlement requests. Simply pick up the phone, present your offer, and see what happens.
In conclusion, learning how to negotiate a debt settlement yourself is not something that is easy to learn. Sometimes it is a better idea to leave everything to a professional debt settlement firm to take care of these matters. If you owe a sizable amount of money to a couple different lenders, the debt settlement company might be able to help you reach a settlement. Yet, if you only owe a few thousand dollars to a company or two, you may be able to make this negotiation on your own because of the small amount of money that they are trying to obtain from you. This article has presented several ideas in regard to how to negotiate a debt settlement yourself. Using this information, you should be able to reach a settlement with most of your creditors, and avoid using a professional debt settlement company.
Author Bio: Lory wood writing for several financial sites. He is expert of Debt consolidation, Debt settlement and bad credit consolidation loans