For South Africans, managing your debt well is important, as having a bad credit rating can have various consequences and easily get you into a sticky situation.
What should you NOT do when you have debt?
An easy default when debt is high and creditors are pressing is to ignore letters of demand or to borrow more money to pay existing debt. This is not the right route. Take a deep breath and consider your options below.
First things first – how to prevent debt going into distress-mode?
Know your status
Get your credit report from one of the national credit bureaus. Knowing what the current state of your credit score is will help you understand what is going on and what you need to do to improve your status, or to keep it as good looking as it is.
Take stock
Make a list of all your active loans, credit cards and other accounts. This information will be listed in detail on your credit report. Make sure you don’t miss anything, even the smallest debt is important to take note of.
Choose reliable loan providers
Working with a reliable loan provider that;
• Saves you money in the process,
• Saves time with their loan approval process,
• Is quick,
will take a lot of stress out of debt management. Companies like payday loan provider, LittleLoans, is great example of a benchmark provider to compare other providers with.
Plan to pay it off
This is the most important part. To ensure that you do not get yourself in a sticky situation, you have to plan your money properly every month to ensure that you make your payments on time and pay off your debt.
A smart way to start is to use the biggest part of the money you set out for pay-back to pay-back your most expensive debts, while still making sure you honour all your other debt commitments.
This can be determined by looking at the interest you pay on your outstanding capital. If the amount of interest is high or there is a smaller amount of interest on a big amount of outstanding capital, these are the ones you want to get rid of first. They can easily keep you paying a lot of money on just interest without actually making any gains on paying off.
What to do if your debt is already stressed?
If you are having trouble in managing your debt, you can consider debt consolidation or consulting a debt management firm. When reaching out to such a firm, make sure:
• They have a healthy reputation
• Are accredited and listed by the NCA
• Offer success stories similar to yours and ladbrokes codes
Some of the popular debt management and consulting firms in South Africa are:
• Debt Rescue
• Debt Fresh
• DebtBusters
• PayPlan Solutions
• DebtSafe
• Consol A Debt
It is important to stay calm, educate yourself about solutions available to you, and reach out to the key parties involved in your debt situation.
