Millions of Americans live without using credit. These people primarily use cash and debit cards for purchases. Millions more use whatever credit they can get their hands on and find themselves wired in debt. In between these two extremes lie the people that realize credit is a tool that they may need to purchase a home, finance a car, or get a student loan. There are times when this tool is important and need to be sharpened other times when it needs to be placed back in the proverbial shed.

There are a few actions which will hurt your credit for years to come. The primary ones are foreclosure and bankruptcy. Everything possible should be done to avoid these events. These are the extremes of putting one’s credit out of commission for years to come.

However, many millions of people live in fear of their credit being hurt even though bills are far out of range of paying them off. People often choose inescapable debt and eternal hardship over other options such as debt settlement.

Debt settlement will place one’s credit in limbo until the debts are all settled. After that one can expect to need a year to rebuild and restore one’s credit fully. Is dramatically shortening the payoff time and amount worth the short term credit damage? Well that depends exactly on how much the short term credit damage means to you. Are you buying/refinancing a house in the near future? Are you buying a car in that time frame? Do you really need a high credit score over the next x years or would you be better off taking some time to get debt free. These are questions all Americans should ask themselves in the hard economic times we live in.

We encourage you to look at your debts as you are paying them now, look at your credit score as it stands today, calculate your payoff time for the debts as they stand, decide on your credit need for the short and long term and then make your decision whether to carry on doing what you are doing, enroll in a debt settlement program, or maybe even to go bankrupt. Don’t make a decision based on fear but rather on your priorities and goals. Examining your situation may lead you to find that your credit is not your highest priority.