Michael Sullivan, Personal Finance Consultant, is an experienced educator who has played a critical role in building Take Charge America's financial education department. With more than 30 years of financial education and counseling experience, he can offer relevant advice and insight on numerous personal finance topics spanning budgeting, credit, debt, bankruptcy and more.
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"A DMP permits the consumer to make regular payments to the credit counseling agency which in turn makes payments to creditors," explains Sullivan. "Many of these creditors will lower interest rates and/or waive fees for DMP clients, making the payments more manageable. A DMP can last for up to 48 months but will eliminate that debt."
A way to get started is by setting up a deduction every payday into a high-yield savings account to help cover emergencies, says Sullivan from Take Charge America. “The initial goal should be to get to $1,000 as quickly as possible to be prepared for the emergency that is almost certain to happen at least once a year.”
“Length of credit history represents 15% of the score,” said Michael Sullivan, a personal finance consultant with Take Charge America, one of the nation’s leading credit counseling and debt management agencies. “This is just a measure of how long you have used credit and how long you have had particular accounts. If lenders have stayed with you for a long period of time, it is likely you have earned their trust. If you got your first credit approval last year, no one is vouching for you. History takes time to develop and just as long to change, so this is not a factor that most consumers can easily change.”