How does debt counselling work?
No-one wants to talk about debt, especially not your own. But no matter how much you ignore it, your debt reality will remain, as will your struggles to pay your minimum monthly instalments.
Debt counselling may just be the help you need to get your financials back on track.
Placing debts under review
Debt counselling is a consistent system of restructuring all your debt instalments into one consolidated and affordable monthly repayment. Like any service, hiring a debt counsellor will cost you, but it’s a small price to pay to get you back on your financial feet.
Your counsellor will look at everything you owe and will negotiate with your creditors for a more affordable repayment rate and even better repayment terms. In turn, your debts may take longer to pay off, but your monthly instalments will be far more manageable.
From there, they’ll help you budget your monthly income to cover your basic expenses and your debt, ensuring that you never pay more than what you can afford.
During this time, you cannot incur any additional debt. If you do, your review will be cancelled.
Debt counselling and your creditors
When you apply for debt counselling, your creditors will be notified by the National Credit Regulator. This note will be removed within 10 days of your debts being paid off, but it may influence your ability to get credit in future.
While you’re in debt counselling, creditors cannot take legal action against you and must honour your new repayment arrangements.
In the end, you still need to pay off your debts, but debt counselling can help make it far more manageable to tackle and less overwhelming.
Next step
For more information, visit our Debt Management page or use the field section in the Community to interact with other customers bank consultants.