A debt consolidation professional contacts your creditors to get your interest rate and monthly payments reduced to an amount you can realistically pay. Debt consolidators often know the key contacts at your creditors on a first name basis and will try to work the best deal for you they can. Let’s say you have an $8,000 debt with a major credit card at 22% interest. An experienced debt consolidator will likely be able to get the credit card company to lower your interest rate and monthly payments significantly. A good debt consolidation expert can lower your monthly payments by up to 50% and in some cases reduce interest charges to nearly zero. Your payments should go toward reducing principal or what you owe, not servicing insurmountable interest fees. An added bonus of debt consolidation is that you will start writing checks to the debt consolidation company, not the separate creditors. This way, you consolidate all your payments and let the consolidation experts deal with the creditors. You will still receive statements from your creditors so you can watch your debt shrink as it’s paid off.