If you cannot afford to pay all of your bills and are considering filing bankruptcy, be sure to consider all of the alternatives to bankruptcy before taking this step. Those who have no property and no income don’t need to file for bankruptcy, they can take no action as there is nothing for their lenders to take from them. This is one of the alternatives to bankruptcy that might be available to retired people or those who are unemployed. In seven years the debt will be removed from your credit record. You probably only want to take this option if you plan to have no income or substantial property for the next seven years.
Creditors will probably end up just writing off the debt to you if you have nothing for them to take. Another of the alternatives to bankruptcy is to try self money management, which means basically that you take a long hard look at where you are spending your money and cut back on some of your expenses that aren’t really necessary, like movie channels on cable, eating out, and magazine subscriptions. This can free up enough money to pay some of your bills, or at least give you enough so that it is easier to work out one of the other alternatives to bankruptcy. It is also possible to negotiate with creditors to try to either lower the payments or get part of your debt forgiven.
If creditors understand that you are looking into alternatives to bankruptcy and that their other option may be to lose out on the whole amount of the debt, they are more likely to agree to negotiate with you. If your creditors aren’t willing to negotiate with you or you aren’t comfortable negotiating with them yourself, you can get help from a nonprofit debt counseling agency, which can do the negotiating for you. However, some of these agencies are mainly funded through credit companies and therefore may have a conflict of interest. They may try to stick to agreements that leave you paying off the full amount of your debts when you might be able to get creditors to forgive some of the debt if you negotiate on your own.
Another of the alternatives to bankruptcy is debt consolidation. We have all heard the commercials for this on the radio and on tv. You take out a lower interest loan to pay back all of your high interest loans so that you only have one, lower interest loan to pay each month. There are debt consolidation companies that can help you with this, though be aware that some of them are not reputable so you want to be very careful when choosing a debt consolidation company. If you have decent credit you may be able to get a loan from your bank.