Here’s how a counseling session helps you in fixing your debt woes:

* They would setup a free session and inform the individual on how he needs to pay his debts back.

* In some cases, they would accept payments from the individual and pay to the creditor. Once the individual has paid back the creditor’s debts, either partially or in full, it allows the credit counseling agency to negotiate the debt with the bank (If any other debts are outstanding).

* Counseling agencies work with the banks to ensure that the individual’s debts are brought back to current status, which helps the individuals in starting off on a level keel. Once the debts are current, all the individual needs to do is make monthly payments, regularly.

Thus, from what could have been a despairing scenario, counseling agencies bring you to a point where you can make only minimum payments and yet not let your FICO scores get affected?

Good counseling agencies will try to reduce the upfront payment needed to be made, by as much as possible. For this, they would try to negotiate with your creditors and try to leverage the debt off. But, the majority of the effort, even in this case, would need to come from the individual.