Debt Consolidation/Credit Counseling

[Jon Passow]

One of my friends knows I'm starting my real estate investing company this year and I guess this means I'm an expert in financing since he started asking me all sorts of questions about his debt, lol. Thought I'd throw this question out to the group so I could point him in the right direction. He has about 20K in debt spread over a few credit cards and a personal loan from a bank. While he is able to make the minimum payments on his debt he knows there might be a better way to budget/get out of debt sooner without effecting his credit score negatively.

When he did research he quickly became overwhelmed with his options especially because of all the scams that are out there. I was thinking that since he doesn't want to go the bankruptcy route, and doesn't have anything in collections, that maybe talking with a non-profit credit counselor (any recommendations from the group?), or possibly getting a 0% interest credit card and moving a large chunk of his debt over to that to help him pay things off quicker would be the route to go. Any thoughts of recommendations would be appreciated :)

[Chris Szepessy]

$20k isn't really an unmanageable amount. I def. don't think it would be worth filing bankruptcy over. Maybe mention Dave Ramsey to him. He's helped a lot of people. I think the debt snowball is a good method to use. What's his lifestyle like? Is he attempting to get out of debt or just looking for an easy way out? Could he get a second job? Sell items on FB or eBay that he isn't using anymore to make extra money to put towards his debts?