In a recent survey it was reported that almost 58% clients vouched for Debt Management Plan as the best way to settle their debts. Another 42% client had filed bankruptcy since dropping off a Debt Management Plan or DMP.

Debt Management plans can reduce your monthly payments, interest charges, penalties and some times even the repayment period. Even if bankruptcy seems like your only solution, it may not be the right debt help solution and may cost you for many years to come. The loss of a job, divorce, credit card spending and family medical emergencies among other life style matters can cause negative money issues. Statistics released by the administrative office of U.S. Courts show that a total of 388,864 new non-business bankruptcy filing in the United States during the quarter, ended on September 30, 2004. This included 274,196 chapter 7 filings and 114,454 chapter 13 filings.

Most economists consider a ratio of unsecured debt to annual income of 40-50% percent or more, as being a strong indicator to bankruptcy. This is taken as a '~thumb rule' in most of the cases. So in order to protect himself from such crisis one should keep his unsecured debt to annual income ratio lower than 40 to 50%. For example if someone has an annual income of $5000, he should keep his annual debt minimum $2000 to $2500 in order to avoid his bankruptcy.

36% or less: This is a healthy debt load to carry for most people.
37%-42%: Not bad, but starts to restructure your debt now before you get into real trouble.
43%-49%: Financial difficulties are likely to occur unless you take immediate action.
50% or more: Get professional help from debt counselor to aggressively reduce debt.

You should also control from having a large amount of unpaid outstanding credit or using more than 80% of your available credit (which causes a high debt to income ratio).

It is better to have a debt free life without having a savings rather than maintaining debts along with savings. The reason is simple. As the return on short term investment i.e. savings is lower than the interest payable on accumulated debt, it is always advisable to pay the debt first rather than go for the short term investment. Because a repayment of single debt instantaneously may save a lot of money in future. In other word, One dollar payment is better than one dollar saving.

From the Consumer Debt so published by Federal Reserve Statistical Release, it is found that each and every year total consumer debt (both revolving and non-revolving) has an increasing trend. In 2000 and 2001, total consumer debt has a rising trend by 11.42% and 8.04% with respect to the year 1999.

However, in 2002 and 2003, total consumer debt increased to 4.45% and 4.52% respectively, at a decreasing rate with respect to just previous year's total consumer debt. As there is no specific trend in total consumer debt we may conclude that in 2005 also, the total consumer debt will have an increasing trend of 4.49% which signifies that at the end of 2005 total consumer debt will reach about $2109.85 Billion.

Summary:-
If you're trying hard to get out of debt, but find that more and more of your take-home pay are going toward your debt payments, this article will help you.