GreenPath is a Credit and Debt Counseling Organization and operates under the same terms I described above. There is a big difference between debt consolidation with a Credit Counselor and a Debt Consolidation Loan. Anyone who is looking to consolidate their payments as a means to reduce their debt is kidding themselves. It MAY reduce your payments (for now) but it will not in any way reduce your debt. In fact, it will make your debt even larger and take much longer to pay off. The bottom line here is... YOU CAN'T BORROW YOUR WAY OUT OF DEBT! If you find yourself in this position then a Chapter 13 Bankruptcy (Reorganization) may be your best bet. It will include ALL your debts, secured and unsecured, into just one (usually) much smaller monthly payment for 36 to 60 months. Again, bankruptcy is easier to recover from than a credit counselor. What you should really be looking at is how you spend your money. Don't use a Budget, they're like Diets, they don't work. What you need is a good Spending Plan. A Spending Plan is not offered by any Credit Counselors I know of. Of course they will tell you different. If that is so then why do 75% of their clients fail? My Grandmother practiced the old Envelope Theory of Bill Paying and Money Management. What I did was digitized it for my own use. I'm not talking using MS-Money or Quicken. Those are Budgeting programs or After The Fact accounting systems. I created digital envelopes on a spreadsheet that even my kids can use. I divided it up into Alphanumonic Categories or Envelopes... A is for Auto / Transportation B is for Babysitting / Child Care C is for Contributions / Charity D is for Dining Out / Fast Food E is for Education F is for Food and Household Items G is also for Grooming H is for Housing I is for Insurance I is also for Income J is for Just for Fun K is for Kids L is for Leisure M is for Medical / Dental N is for Not Planned For O is for Other / Misc P is for Payments (all debts) Q is for Gifts / Holidays / B-Days etc. R is for Record Keeping / Postage S is for Savings / Investments T is for Taxes U is for Utilities V is for Vices W is for Wardrobe X is for Business Expenses Y is a Question I ask myself. The answer is Because it works. Z is for the sleep I get when Im on track and living comfortably within my means. Each "Category" has several sub-categories and each one has a monthly amount to spend. If I don't spend it all the remainder goes to my savings. Only a few categories will have money that forwards to the next months Spending Plan. I call this, Saving My Savings. What I found is that after just 90 to 120 days I had 10% to 20% of my Income left over at the end of the month, after ALL the bills were paid, to do anything I wanted with. I even found that by applying a Domino or Roll-up system to my P for Payments envelope, I could retire ALL my debt in approximately one-third the normal time period without ever having to change my payments, add more money to my payments or having to borrow to consolidate. My $185,000 in debts that would have taken me 26 more years to pay off will be completely gone in less than 7 years for not a dime more than I'm paying right now. Emergencies aren't a problem either because one of my envelopes is Savings. Within just a few months I had over $2500 in my Emergency Fund at the Credit Union. Everything over that goes to my Self Directed Roth IRA to grow Tax Free. When I started this my wife and I only made a combined income of less than $40,000 per year and we have 6 kids to boot. Anyone can do it, it just takes discipline. Oh. Yes, I have been asked many times if I would right a book about my system. The answer is yes, and Ive been working on it for about 15 years now. At this pace it should be done in about 10 more years. LOL You see Im really good about Spending my time doing other things like reading all your posts on Garden Web. Good Luck, Scotty

It sounds like with the number of credit cards you are currently holding, along with the large balance on the citibank card, you would be a great candidate for a REPUTABLE debt settlement program. I say reputable because it is well known that the majority of debt settlement companies have taken their fees first before they ever settle one of your accounts. However, new FTC legislation bans this practice, and as of October 27th, 2010, debt settlement companies must settle at least one of your debts before they can charge you for their services. You may genuinely benefit from working with an accredited debt settlement company. By doing so, the company will negotiate with your creditors on your behalf to help secure a settlement that is a percentage of what you originally owed. Great settlements are usually somewhere between 40-60% of the original debt. If you do choose to do this be aware that your credit will initially suffer, but that with more cash flow to go around because it is not being eaten up in minimum payments and interest, you can actually begin to repair your own credit by making solid financial decisions. In reality, you most likely already have poor credit due to your current situation, so you seem to have nothing to lose by seeking reputable, outside help. You can get ideas for repairing your credit from myfico.com. Further, I would be wary of going with a credit counseling agency. Though they may have a 'non-profit' status, they are in reality usually set up by the credit card companies themselves in order to recover as much of the original debt as possible. Nobody works for 'free.' Credit counseling works by contacting your creditors to lower the overall interest rate of a debt. Though this may save you some money, you would be better off finding an accredited debt settlement company to negotiate for you. Arm yourself with perseverance and a solid understanding of all your options. Once you set your mind on a plan, follow through- debt does not have to consume your entire life, and can be paid off in time.

Coyote_Gramma, you may have worked for a counseling service that required for consumers to pay a monthly fee. However, not all organizations required a monthly fee. Years ago, in the early 90's, I have used one of this CCCS organization that showed on my previous replies. I came to know this service through a tip from a creditor collector after she apologized that she couldn't lowered the rate nor the monthly payment anymore. 'Til this day, I wish she knew how wrong she was. By letting me be awared of CCCS, she literally saved my life. I didn't pay a dime for the CCCS service. Their services lasted for over 4 years until all creditors were paid in full. CCCS explained that their non-profit organization was funded by the government. Most companies that takes monthly fees from consumers are individual operated. As for negotiating the rates and payments with the creditors, I tried many times but were unabled to go as low as 0% interest. CCCS, due to who they were, was able to negotiate 12 out of 15 creditors down to 0% interest easily. 2 other creditors agreed to 7% and 8% interest. The only one that would not budged to lower the interest was Sears. However, they agreed to a much lower monthly payment. I doubt that the normal consumer could easily achieve this. This system is better than declaring bankruptcy or even bringing your credit to a lower level. In my case, after all payments were paid in full to the creditors, I closed all those accounts down except for 1. A few years later my credit score reached to normal and later to a higher score enough where I could purchased a car and a house with very low interest rates. I now have 2 credit cards opened and have been maintaining a low to 0 monthly balance for many years. Although, Macey may not need this service, I am posting my experience for those that are in high dept to know that there is hope and that a non-profit organization such as CCCS do exist. It does no harm to check them out.

There really isn't anything horribly wrong with credit counselors, and they have probably helped many people. The only problem is that using them puts a pretty big dent in your credit rating, and a lot of people wind up filing bankruptcy anyhow. To a creditor, someone in credit counseling is in most ways a WORSE risk than someone who has just filed bankruptcy, because the bankruptcy option is still out there for you when you're in credit counseling. If you file bankruptcy, on the other hand, you can't do it again for six years. Since you're already in credit counseling, the best thing to do at this point would be stick with it, continuing to make your scheduled payments, and keep your existing credit accounts open. The creditors may not cancel your accounts, as they often do in bankruptcy, since you are paying them off. One option available to you if you don't want to file bankruptcy and want to avoid credit counseling is to contact creditors yourself. Many times you as an individual can work out agreements very similar to (or maybe even better than) a credit counseling service can do.