Financial help

Please be very careful about this. A friend of mine (against my advice) went to one of these reputable counseling services. Her credit was pretty good (high 600s) but she was getting lost in trying to keep up with all the individual payments she had to make a month. For some reason she thought consolidation was the way to go. Well, the service did just that for her. But one of the payments was turned in late. With that one mistake the service did, all of her creditors raised her interest rates into the mid to high 20% range, cut her limits down to around $1000 (previously she had $20,000 limits) and her overall fico dropped to the mid 500s. A hard lesson learned. What I suggested to her before hand is that she call each creditor and re-negotiate her payment amount and the interest. This is a legal right every card holder has and if they are persistent enough, they can adjust their payments to a more affordable rate. In some cases a creditor will settle for 50% of the balance due (and in some cases allow 2 payments) and then show the account paid in full. This makes for a nicer looking credit history and they get this delinquent account out of their hair. If it were me, this is what I'd do first. Good luck to you!