With mounting bills and unforeseen hardships, you may be considering some form of debt relief. There are many options to help you, but the best may actually be you helping yourself. Here are some suggestions for starting debt relief and becoming more solvent.

First, don’t stop communication. While it is a natural response to stop answering the phone and let the mail stack up unopened, this doesn’t solve anything. Contact your creditors. Explain the situation to them. In many cases, they will work with you to reduce your debt by lowering the interest rate and waiving over-the-limit and late fees.

Second, stop using all your credit cards. Whether you file for bankruptcy or sign on with a credit counseling service or debt settlement, all of them will demand that you give up your credit cards. Do it yourself now.

Third, make getting out of debt a priority, and work toward debt relief as though you were with a credit counseling service. This is how credit counseling services work. You make one regular payment to them each month, and they disburse your money to the creditors. When one is paid off, the extra money is applied to the other creditors. If you have extra money one month, put it toward one of your bills. As soon as you have paid off that bill, take the money you would have spent on that one bill and apply that every month to another bill. By continually making larger payments than what is owed, the credit cards will be paid off faster.

Some companies will tell you that because you are not a professional negotiator, credit card companies will still take you for as much as they can. That is a possibility. If you are unsure about taking the above steps yourself, you can check into debt settlement, debt consolidation, or consumer credit counseling services. All of these options promise to reduce your debt by anywhere from 40-60% and to be debt free within 1-5 years. Be careful, though. Some will take an upfront fee of up to thousands of dollars, which doesn’t get applied to your creditors. Others claim to be non-profit and will take a donation, but the donation may seem like just another bill to pay. Further, they may guarantee to protect your credit rating from bankruptcy, but that doesn’t mean that your credit rating will come through cleanly because you are dealing with a debt relief service.

Do plenty of research before signing on with any of them for debt relief.