Home equity loans also make perfect sense if you know exact amount that you need to borrow. While it is always nice to have cash on hand it is often better to have more credit available to you. The more of your credit limit that you use up higher interest rates will be for you and tougher it will be to borrow more money in event of an emergency. It is definitely to your advantage to only be in debt for a specific amount to complete one project.

A line of credit option may be better depending upon what you wish to do with your money. While you will still use up a portion of your credit limit, payments and impacts on your available credit may be lower. With a line of credit you always have same amount of money available to you. As you pay off amount of credit used, you can reuse that portion if needed without having to apply for another loan. Also your payments may be considerably lower since you are only paying on amount of money that you have actually used, not total amount borrowed.

As you can see there are some big differences between a home equity loan and line of credit. If you are looking at a single project, such as a new car or adding a pool to your home, a home equity loan is better choice for you. However, if you are looking at starting up a new business, wish to travel or can not settle on predetermined amount money, then a line of credit is better option for you. With a line of credit you can use as much of your credit as you wish whenever you wish and, much like a credit card, you can reuse amount of line of credit that you have repaid with out having to re-apply for a loan.

One thing that will effect your credit rating is promptness of your credit-counseling agency. When you are in a credit-counseling program you will give agency a monthly check that they will use to pay your creditors. If agency does not pay your creditors on time or in full your credit score will be impacted. Be sure to check out history of your credit-counseling agency to avoid this.

As you might assume, committing to a credit-counseling program does require a lot of work and conviction from you. The hardest part for many people is to break habit of reaching for a credit card to pay for a bill that just came in mail. The second hardest thing for most people to do is to learn to live within in their means. Everyone likes instant gratification and often we feel entitled to it, but perhaps if we had shown a little more discipline in first place we wouldn't need credit counseling now.

As you can see, credit counseling is a good and reasonable option if you find yourself with too much debt. Credit counseling will not effect your credit score and will ultimately make you a better person as you will learn better skills for handling your money. If you find yourself slipping into revolving credit card debt problems make sure you take correct steps to resolve problem before you are forced into bankruptcy.