When you find yourself in serious debt and realize that you are in over your head, the most important thing that you can do is to work with a debt consolidation agency to work out the best possible debt settlement that you can. A debt settlement is a way to satisfy your creditors by paying a pre-negotiated lower payment which they agree to accept as full payment for your debt.
The first thing you should do when negotiating a debt consolidation settlement is to ask that the interest being charged on your account be waived or greatly reduced. This is important because if you dont get your creditors to agree to this up front they will continue to charge interest and late fees and instead of your payments going towards reducing your debt, it will go to interest and late payments and your debt itself will hardly be touched.
Next you will want to roll all your credit card accounts into one account with one monthly payment. If you are rolling all the balances onto one card, be sure to roll them onto the card that carries the lowest interest rate. It is important when you do this to NOT use the credit cards anymore.
As you pay off each of your creditors, you...