Don't Hurt Your Credit Score When You Combine Your Credit Card Debt?

By Layla Vanderbilt

The interest rates on most credit cards offer are high and make it difficult to pay them off. A consumer can spend hundreds of thousands of dollars just paying the interest and never lowering the principle. Many people are unable to pay enough to make a difference and end up with a large amount of credit card debt.

To help with this issue, several companies offer what is called debt consolidation.They offer to remove all your debt quickly. It's hard to know if this is a good idea. Will consolidating your debt plunge your credit score even further down? Will lowering the debt help your score in the long run? The answers depend on a few things.

If you are a person who has proved you are able to make timely payments, consolidation can be a positive way to reduce your credit card debt which greatly lowers your debt-to-income ratio while raising your overall credit score.

When your credit scores are negatively impacted, you can pay the debts for a lower amount through consolidation companies which will help you by taking the case on your behalf, but your credit score will be lowered. Since the future purchases are in consideration, most people tend to avoid consolidation techniques.

Another method of consolidation is to pay off the balance on all your credit cards with proceeds from a home equity loan or another mortgage on your home (called a second mortgage). Interest is almost always much lower with these types of loans. They look much better on your loan record, too. Your credit score won't suffer nearly as much if you add a loan of $15,000 to your mortgage instead of to some high-interest credit card.

Stop and think about your whole financial picture before you jump into the first opportunity that arises to consolidate your credit card debt. A company may offer to intervene and get the amount you owe negotiated down, but that method may also affect your ability to borrow again for a long, long time. Down the road you may need another loan for a good purpose, but you'll likely be charged higher interest rates--and that's if you can get approved for the loan at all. A short-term ?fix? may be very costly in the long run.

Your credit rating is an asset that you should want to maintain and grow, so examine all your options before taking what looks like an easy way out of your current financial crisis. - 23223

About the Author:

Layla Vanderbilt is the webmaster for a leading website that offers for debt consolidation advice and guidance.

Forex Currency Trading Software Review - Making Money In Forex Trading Automatically

By William Barnes

For those looking at investments and looking to trade currencies, you might have looked into forex trading. What used to be so time consuming is no longer the case. With forex currency trading software, almost anyone can do this now. How is that? with this software anything is possible.

There are a number of them out there that have some pretty good advantages. You should see all that they can do for you. Let us begin with the best part about this software. If you do not know much about forex then that is not a problem as you do not have to know a whole lot to do this.

The next thing is that when you sleep, this software will continue to run. Therefore, those ones that you used to stay up till all these odd hours will be able to be dealt with and have a shot at. You can sleep and it will do the work for you.

The other benefit is that you can see where you are at on a daily basis. Everything is done in real time which makes some people very happy. So, while some make you wonder what you are trading at and so forth, with this, you already know.

With a personal history you can look at trends. This allows you to have an idea as to what is working and what is not. When you did this yourself, you were not able to see all that you can see with the personal history. This is just one of the major benefits that people find.

As you can see, with forex currency trading software, you get a lot out of it. This might be the answer to some financial prayers that you might have. So check into it and see just how easy it is to use. You might just be a little impressed. - 23223

About the Author:

Want to Download Forex Currency Trading Software? Read the author's review of the Top 5 Forex Trading Robots on the web at http://www.review-best.com/forex-trading-robots-download.htm first!

The Truth About the Average American's Credit Card Debt

By Layla Vanderbilt

Many sources, including the government, the media, and even bank officials, have claimed that the American people have a lot of credit card debt. There are many rumors going around saying that Americans owe thousands of dollars each in credit card debt. They usually will give statistics with their claims to help back the claims up. However the truth about Americans credit card debt is often skewed and hidden. The only way to see the truth is to break down the numbers.

There's a statistic that claims the average American carries more than $8,000 in credit card debt. This statistic is widely believed because of its publicity. However the fact is that the statistic itself is skewed in the way it was found. The average American is conceived of as having kids and living in a multiple bedroom house with a basement. We can see that the word average can easily confuse a person about what it really means.

The truth is that most American households don't have debt. In fact only about 1 in 20 American households have $8,000 or more in debt. This means that the majority of American families have paid off their credit cards or don't have credit cards. Out of the remaining households, most of them only owe $2,000 or less. An average can't tell you how much the average American owes as it's a skewed number.

The reason that the truth about credit card debt is hidden is because of how they got the $8,000 number. They got it by taking $750 billion, which is all the outstanding credit card debt, and divided it by 84 million, which is the number of American households that have credit cards. While this may seem reasonable at first glance it's just a myth when you're talking about the average American household.

The truth about credit card debt is that most Americans aren't even counted in the calculation. There are many American households that have no credit cards. In fact 23.8%, almost a quarter of American households, have no credit cards. That's a quarter of American households that weren't even factored into the calculation. Another huge portion of households pay off their credit cards in full. How many households? 31.2%! The truth about credit card debt is that 55% of Americans have none. We can further break down the remaining 45% of households.

For the $1,000+ range there are only 29% that are in that range and only 21% of households that owe $2,000 or more. Finally we can see that only 4% of households owe $10,000+ and 1% of American households have credit card debt in excess of $21,000. We can see that very little to nothing is owed by most of the American households. There are only 21% of American households that actually owe more than $2,000 in credit card debt. This is only 1/5 American households that owe a decent amount of money to credit card companies and we can see that the $8,000 is nowhere near what the average American household owes in credit card debt. - 23223

About the Author:

Layla Vanderbilt is the webmaster for a leading website that offers for instant bad debt consolidation advice and guidance.

Nationwide Real Estate Market About To Slide Further!

By Gavin J. King

Like a carnival free-fall ride that stops suddenly, teasing riders into a false sense of safety before plummeting the rest of the way to the ground, some economists say the housing market could once again be headed for a plunge after slowly clawing back some of its 2008 losses.

It is rare that a combination of government factors depresses the real estate market, but projections indicate a slump of 10-15% in prices may be coming our way.

After a 36 month departure from the peak of the real estate market, the topic of the day is still real estate and the current trend in prices. Chicken Little Syndrome initiated the bust and has continued its decline, even though we did have 7% appreciate across the nation this year

The first shoe to fall was last week's Federal Housing Authority announcement that it would tighten its loan standards in light of defaults that had pushed the agency's reserves well below its mandated level.

Using the huge number of loan defaults, the FHA reasoned that raising the required down payment for buyers with the lowest credit, increased the PMI premiums for its loans, and reduced the amount of seller pre-paids and closing costs allowed.

Conventional loan programs are having a hard time placing loans with qualified borrowers, who are turning to FHA financing for easier loans

Due to these trends many borrowers are considering the FHA as their only source available for financing their home purchases, which means the government will be backing even more loans than the already burdened Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac do. With conventional loan sources completing fewer and fewer loans on a daily basis, the necessity for FHA loan programs is increasingly supporting and boosting our real estate market and our economy in general. In a market where every cent can be important, utilizing FHA financing may be the best way home buyers can successfully navigate the tough world of real estate. - 23223

About the Author:

The author enjoys writing articles about boise idaho real estate agent & boise idaho homes. Click on the above links to learn more about these topics!

Different Types Of Forex Trade Orders

By Chris Wigtune

Forex brokers are able to provide currency traders with access to the forex exchange market though the interbank exchange allowing them access to the once unattainable market for small investors.

There are several different types of orders traders are able to place in order to execute trades into the market ranging from stop loss orders, to take profit orders, to limit orders, to buy/sell stop limit orders to trailing stops.

Limit orders are used in order to place take profit levels once a trade is opened. Limit orders are also called take profit orders because of this.

Stops loss orders are used in orders to protect losses once a trade is opened or moved to lock in profits once a trade has moved in favor of the trader. Many novice traders make the mistake of not using stop loss order and this actually is the worst mistake you can make. Always use a stop loss when trading.

Traders use trailing stops as way to lock in profits as a trade moves into profit and also to continually lock in more and more profit along the way as the trade continues to grow in profit.

A very useful order type is a sell stop limit or a buy stop limit which basically allows a trader to set a buy or sell limit order that is above or below the current market price once price actually reaches that level.

Today forex brokers are providing more choices than ever to traders and investors when it comes to the types of trade orders they offer as well as the leverage and unit sizes traders can trade with.

Forex brokers offer many different types of trade order types to help traders have choices when trading forex and using systems to profit. Traders use these different types of orders to take advantage of different market cycles profiting from the forex markets. - 23223

About the Author:

Want to find out more about Forex Brokers, then visit Chris Wigtune's site for forex broker comparison for your trading needs.