When debt gets out of control it can put you in a position of financial distress, but most consumers don’t want to ask for help to get back on the right financial path. In fact, according to a CreditCards.ca survey, finances are the number one taboo topic in the minds of most consumers. As a result of this cultural norm, the majority of us don’t want to ask anyone for financial help, even when the hardship has reached a point where it’s impossible to deal with alone. Yet still, since there are ways to handle a debt problem on your own, how can you really tell when it’s time to seek debt help? To determine if you can handle a debt problem on your own or if you need to find help, ask yourself the following three questions: How much unsecured credit card debt do I currently owe? How much available cash flow do I have in my budget? What is my credit rating? If you have a significant amount of cash flow available at the end of each month, you may be able to implement a debt reduction strategy in order to get the debt under control, depending on the size of your debt. You may be able to make extra payments on one credit card at a time to reduce your credit card debt effectively. With each credit card debt you eliminate, you free up that much more money to pay off the next debt until you have regained control of your finances. For instance, if you have $5,000 in credit card debt, but have $150 in cash available each month, devoting that money to eliminating the debt would mean you are debt-free in less than four years. If you don’t have the cash flow available in your budget or the debt is simply too high to pay off in a reasonable amount of time, you may still be able to eliminate the debt and handle the problem on your own if you have excellent credit scores. With excellent credit, you can qualify for the low interest rates necessary to make do-it-yourself debt consolidation options work. You may be able to use a credit card balance transfer or an unsecured debt consolidation loan to consolidate the debt into one low monthly payment. The payment schedule will be more manageable for your budget and, because the interest rate on the debt is so much lower, you can often get out of debt faster even as you pay less each month. It’s important to note that these do-it-yourself debt consolidation options only work if you have extremely strong credit in order to qualify for the best rates. Otherwise, if you have fair credit scores or bad credit scores, you may not get approved at all or you may get approved at an interest rate that doesn’t provide the financial relief you need. What’s more, if you use a do-it-yourself debt solution in the wrong circumstances, you can potentially make your financial hardship even worse. In this case, when you have high debt, limited cash flow and low credit scores, then you need to seek help with your debt. You may still be able to consolidate so you can get the same relief you would with do-it-yourself debt consolidation options, but you go through a credit counselling agency so your credit scores are not a factor for qualification. You can contact a not-for-profit credit counselling agency to see if you qualify for debt consolidation through a debt management program. Typically, as long as you have some means to make the reduced payment each month, you can usually qualify for the program. This is a guest post provided by Consolidated Credit, a credit counselling Ottawa organization.  You can follow them on Twitter. ...