Related Services - The following directories of companies and services offer a wide variety of financial programs to assist you with handling your debts. Consolidate your bills with a debt consolidation loan or use a debt management or credit counseling service for help with your credit card bills and other payments.

• Credit Debt Consolidation - If you have a large amount of  credit card and other debts, now may be a good time to consolidate your debt and lower your payments.
• Debt Settlement Companies - Too much debt? List of companies providing this alternative to bankruptcy that provides for debt negotiation and arbitration services for those that need to eliminate debt.
• Personal Loan Rate - Need a personal loan for debt consolidation? These types of loans often do not require collateral and are available to homeowners, as well as renters.

Protect Against Bad Deals and Scams that Arrive by Phone, Letter and the Internet

Beware of crooks impersonating legitimate businesses, charities and other organizations

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Thoroughly check out any offer before agreeing to anything. Always get key details in writing. Carefully read all the documentation, including the fine print in applications and contracts, to understand your potential costs, risks and requirements. Don't just rely on what a sales person tells you or what's printed in promotional literature. Ask friends and family what they think.

Do some comparison shopping at your bank and one or two other financial services firms to make sure that the "special" unsolicited offer you received is really special.

With credit card offers, for example, carefully review the terms and conditions, including the potential fees or penalties, all of which must be disclosed to you before you incur any charges on the account. By law, the most important terms in credit card offers must be in a specially highlighted box or near the box.

FDIC Consumer News is published by the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation

FDIC Consumer News is produced quarterly by the FDIC Office of Public Affairs in cooperation with other Divisions and Offices. It is intended to present information in a nontechnical way and is not intended to be a legal interpretation of FDIC or other government regulations and policies. Mention of a product, service or company does not constitute an endorsement.

Find current and past issues of FDIC Consumer News at http://www.fdic.gov/consumernews. Refer to this same index to locate the issues that are specially formatted for being reprinted in any quantity.

To receive an e-mail notice about each new issue of FDIC Consumer News posted on the FDIC Web site, with links to stories, follow instructions posted at www.fdic.gov/about/subscriptions/index.html.

Last updated on 2/2/2007

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