A: It’s very important for consumers to keep lines of communication open with their creditors if they are experiencing problems making payments. At same time, I doubt you’ll be able to negotiate same terms that a counseling agency can.

There are several reasons why. First, creditors know when someone enters into a counseling program that they are making a serious effort to repay their debt. Consumers in a counseling program, for example, agree not to take on additional debt. Secondly, creditors know they will be treated fairly when a consumer is in a counseling program. Without counseling agency as “go between,” consumers might feel pressured to pay one creditor (you know “squeaky wheel” adage), which could mean other payments slide. Finally, counseling agency takes on responsibility of making monthly payments to each participating creditor. That makes it easier for you, since you only have one monthly payment to make to counseling agency, but it also means creditor knows they can get a reliable answer from agency if a payment isn’t received on time. Together, all this means that most creditors feel much more comfortable negotiating with a professional credit counseling agency instead of directly with consumers.

-- Howard Dvorkin, founder of Consolidated Credit Counseling Services Inc. Credit Counseling Services Inc., all rights reserved. To ask a question, or to learn more about strategies to reduce your debt, visit www.ConsolidatedCredit.org or call 800-210-3481.

The first step in developing a plan of action is to know what is contained in your credit file, and how to read file. We suggest that you have a complete credit analysis performed and results sent to you. Millennium Credit Service provides a Credit Analysis Program that can analyze your credit report and give consumer a guide to what needs to be corrected to improve their credit rating, to find out more about this service and other services offered by Millennium Credit Service visit their website at http://www.millennium-credit.com.

Now that you have a firm understanding of what information is contained on your credit report, and if you had an analysis performed you have a general idea of how to start rebuilding better credit, it is time to start developing your strategy:

•First, go through report and ensure that all of personal information is correct, this includes social security number, address, employment, and name. This information should match information provided on any future credit applications. •Verify all accounts contained on credit file, make sure they are all of your accounts and if there are any entries that are not yours list them as items to be disputed. Items that are not yours can be disputed and agency has (30) day to correct any inaccurate entries. •Check date of last activity on all negative accounts because they can only be reported for up to (7) years on your report and bankruptcies up to (10) years. If any items are older than time listed you have right to have them removed from your file, but time limit starts from date of last activity.

These are first steps needed to be taken to start rebuilding your credit, if you need any assistance or feel that task is a bit much, you can always hire a professional credit repair company like Millennium Credit Service to do work for you. Just remember there is nothing a credit repair company can do for you that you can’t do yourself, only difference is that these companies deal with consumer reporting agencies all time, and they provide an objective professional attitude when repairing their clients credit. This is important because it relieves consumer of headaches and frustrations of deal with consumer reporting agencies, but be sure to hire a company that gets paid for services performed and does not require up-front payment.