That advice was unexpected and came very early in the day as I got out of bed and headed for the front door to retrieve the morning mail. Along with a few obvious bills I got one of ?those? envelopes though the letterbox, bright yellow, red letters, you know the type, just lying on the floor waiting for me. On this envelope were instructions to ?Open Now ?. So of course I did and you can imagine my surprise when I find it is yet another invite for me to take out a loan!

This ad writer was really going for it. In the envelope there was about half a dozen slips of paper explaining about what bonuses you could get and tempting pictures of varying piles of money. I also came across a nice ?did you know? fact sheet with a few useful gems, such as the average debt in the UK is around ?8,577 and that almost half of the UK adult population are affected my money worries. You just cannot argue with that. It is all good factual stuff, aimed at you and designed to empathies with your own personal situation.

Turning my attention to the main body of a very long sales letter it then asked you to ?imagine waking up knowing your finances are sorted once and for all?.

I doubt there is any deliberate intend to mislead the reader with this statement but within it lays the problem with debt consolidation loans, your problems are not sorted once and for all, they are just extended over a longer period of time. They will get even worse if you take on the loan with the lower monthly payments but continue to spend what you have left.

Something I will always find disturbing is to discover at the bottom of that well written sales page what looks like a cheque with instructions to fill it out with the amount you want to borrow, tear it off along the dotted line and then pop it in the free post. If you are struggling with debt, this is like giving someone who is trying to quit smoking a packet of cigarettes, the match to light it and telling them to have as many as they like!

If you have debt problems you certainly do not need an imaginary cheque being waved under your nose.

However the best advice about borrowing to get out of debt is made very clear by the loan company themselves. Right at the very bottom of the letter is another factual note...?If you are thinking of consolidating existing borrowing you will be extending the terms of the debt and increasing the total amount you repay?. To the credit of the firm that sent this material they have made that part very clear and correct.

If the firm that is going to lend you all this money tells you it is not really such a good idea. Then that is top notch advice from an expert on debt consolidation-The Lender, someone who really knows!