Are you in a "debt hell"? If you are unsure, ask yourself these questions:

1. Do you have bill collectors calling you and home and at work, leaving annoying messages?

2. Are you afraid to open the door in the morning because you are afraid that the Sheriff`s office has left a court goody for you?

3. When the phone rings, do you get butterflies in your stomach?

4. If you answer the phone and it`s a bill collector, when they ask for you, do you reply "He/She`s not in right now", or even just pick up the phone and then hang it up without saying who is on the other end?

5. Do you go for days on end without checking the mail because there are only bills there?

6. When you finally do get the mail, do you just throw it in some random location for weeks or even months without ever opening it?

7. Are you paying one credit card company`s bill with another credit card?

8. Are your credit cards riddled with over the credit limit and late fees?

9. Do you only receive high interest credit card offers?

10. Have you applied for credit cards or car loans and been told that you had been denied because of bad credit?

11. Does your credit report show a lot of late payments, charge-offs, bad debt, 30 60 90 or 120 days late entries listed?

12. Does filing bankruptcy seem like your only way out?

Believe me, I know what you are going through. I was in this situation. I had recently moved from a large metropolitan area with decent pay, to a smaller area where the cost of living was almost just as high, and had to take almost a $20K paycut. On top of that, I just had a baby and was a single-mom to boot.

I had to ?live?, and with a $20K cut, it didn?t leave me with a choice (or so I thought) other than to not pay bills and get the things I needed (baby formula, diapers, etc.). Let me tell you, I was depressed. I didn?t open my bills for months at a time. The phone would ring every morning staring from 8 am and continued until 9 pm at night. Bill collectors would call me at work and leave messages with their ?800? numbers with co-workers if I wasn?t there. It was so embarrassing. I went on like this for about a year before I finally decided to find that I had to do something.

I had seen ads on TV for debt consolidation and consumer credit counselor services ?CCCS? offering freedom from financial worries and the opportunity to gain your life and dignity back, but for some reason, didn?t take the plunge. One day I was talking with a friend and they told me how they had joined Consumer Credit Counseling Services (CCCS) and they were very relieved and financially stress free. CCCS was able to contact all of the creditors that they had credit card balances with and was able to either reduce their credit card interest to interest rates that were one digit and in some cases down to 0% interest! Consumer Credit Counseling Services was also able to eliminate most of their late fees and over the credit limit fees so that when they made payments, it went directly to their credit card balances and helped them pay it off their debt quicker.

All of this information was exciting and sounded very promising to me, and now I had someone that I knew telling me how it worked for them, so it became much more realistic. I searched the yellow pages for the credit counseling agencies and the found my local branch of Consumer Credit Counseling Services. I called them up, made an appointment and went in. I was assigned a counselor and met with her for about an hour. When I walked out, I had a huge sense of relief. I was setup with a plan of action for how my debt was going to be blasted away. I was assured that the annoying and harassing debt collection phone calls were going to cease. I was only going to have to concern myself with making one payment to my local CCCS office, and they would take care of the hassle of sending all of the credit card payments out to my other creditors. In two years, I was going to be debt free.

If you are in a similar situation, I urge you to look into consumer credit counseling services. They can get you back on track, reduce your stress, improve life for you and your family and change your life overall for the better.