According to wordtracker, 1819 searches are made per day for the word debt consolidation while debt settlement or debt relief makes only 300 search counts per day. Do you think that all these people who are searching for this word actually want to do debt consolidation? My experience says that most of them want a debt solution. People feel that debt consolidation is the most commonly accepted debt solution.

Is the word debt consolidation misinterpreted?

If we look at Debt Consolidation Care some new members feel debt consolidation is all about settling debts, some feel it is about getting counseling and some feel it is about managing the whole debt. Some even feel it is about doing everything together to settle debts. Consolidation is "The act of combining into an integral whole", so debt consolidation should be "The act of combining all fragmented debts into an integral whole". There are different ways of debt consolidation; however, the most common way of merging all the debts is by taking another loan.

Is debt consolidation different from debt consolidation loan?

Yes, it is. Even Wikipedia confuses between "debt consolidation" and "debt consolidation loan". Debt consolidation loan is about taking a new loan to repay your entire fragmented loan. This can:-

Make debts more manageable.
Sometimes reduce the average interest rate paid on fragmented debts.
Further reduce the average interest paid on fragmented debts if a bigger secured debt (like home equity loan, which will offer much lower interest rate) is used to pay unsecured debts.

Debt consolidation loan is a kind of debt consolidation. Sometimes taking a huge loan to repay your other loans is not advisable. In the absence of collateral attachments, it is seen that many reliable creditors refuse to offer a huge loan package at lower rates.

From a customer's point of view, it is basically consolidating many monthly payments to one in a smarter way to save more and pay faster. This can be done even without taking a loan by using debt management program, which is again widely perceived as debt consolidation, as monthly payments are consolidated to one. Next section of the article will explain it further.

Why everything is perceived as debt consolidation?

What customer sees is one big monthly payment, which might be used by a law firm under different schemes to settle debts.

A law firm may use the money for an account basis suited solution, which may include:-

Debt Settlement: One account may go for debt settlement, so the company may sometimes accumulate the monthly payments to offer a lump sum.
Debt Consolidation Loan: Another account may be paid off using another loan.

So the perceived debt consolidation includes:-

Consolidating monthly payments to one.
Debt settlement.
Debt negotiation with the creditors.
Credit counseling.
Debt consolidation loan.
Debt management.
Debt portfolio.
Asset portfolio.
Budgeting.

When nothing works out the law firm helps the customer file a suited bankruptcy. Next time when you hear "debt consolidation", remember it can be a perceived word for a mix of debt solutions.

Janet Williams is a financial writer for www.debtconsolidationcare.com