We have all struggled with money, debt and personal finance issues throughout our lives, some more than others but everyone who does suffer from debt issues all have one thing in common and that’s the need to resolve the issue before it gets worse.

Debt management plans have been around for a long time now and hundreds of thousands of people have successfully used a debt management to negotiate themselves out of debt, but there many disadvantages to a debt management plan, some of which a provider may not tell you, for example:

• Your first months’ or first 2 months’ payment will not go to your creditors, which they will not be too pleased about. The service provider will typically take the first and second payment from you as their fee, meaning you clear no debt in this time and your creditors get seriously agitated.

• Your credit rating will take a hit, the first month or two that you don’t pay your creditors your credit rating will take a nosedive, and this will not recover for 6 years after the DMP finishes.

• Banks and lenders will almost certainly stay clear of you for up to 6 years after the debt management plan has finished because of your bad credit file.

Well that’s the negatives done with; unfortunately just like any financial plan to get you out of debt a DMP has it’s down sides. What you want to hear is that there are some great plusses to, with the biggest one being the debt free future of course.

One major thing that I would advise anyone going onto a DMP is to go for a claims management company as the provider, those who specialize in PPI claims because if you have debt the chances are that you have several loans and credit cards, with that you will almost certainly have been mis-sold PPI somewhere along the line.

PPI was sold alongside a loan or credit card to protect the holder against falling ill, becoming unemployed or suffering an accident through no fault of their own but controversy struck when an independent investigation by the FSA revealed that millions of people in the UK were mis-sold PPI and could claim back thousands of pounds because of it.

So if you are looking to go on a debt management plan, call up a PPI claims company who also provide debt management services, they will be able to help you identify if you could claim back thousands in PPI claims and write off some or all of your debt straight away!