Let’s say you have a $8,000 debt with a major credit card at 22% interest. An experienced debt consolidator will likely be able to get the credit card company to lower your interest rate and monthly payments significantly.

 A good debt consolidation expert can lower your monthly payments up to 50%, in some cases reducing interest charges to nearly zero. Your payments should go toward reducing principal, what you owe, not servicing interest.

 An added bonus of debt consolidation is that you will start writing checks to the debt consolidation company, not the separate creditors. This way, you consolidate all your payments and let the consolidation experts deal with the creditors. You will still receive statements from your creditors so you can watch your debt shrink as it’s paid off.