which is better?

Definately consolidation. For settlements to work and occur, you have to be delinquent on your cards at least 90-180 days. I'm not sure about your situation but don't let credit be your only deciding factor if: you're on the verge of bankruptcy, barely making your minimum payments, robbing Peter to pay Paul, foresee a drastic change in your income, etc, etc; if any of these is the case, then consolidation probably won't benefit you at all.

That's a great question and one that should always be asked by anyone considering their options. From a credit aspect, consolidation has less of a negative effect. It will hurt your credit scores, just not as much.

I usually recommend that folks shouldn???t focus solely on credit. There are other factors at work such as time and cost that deserve equal (and more in many situations) consideration. One must consider their own budget and goals that they???d like to accomplish. Although Debt Settlement has a more negative effect on one???s credit, it is much less costly and much more time efficient. If you can easily afford the consolidation or CCCS option, it is probably a better bet than Debt Settlement. However, if the CCCS payments put a real strain on your budget, you may want to consider Debt Settlement or Debt Mitigation.

Let me know if you have any follow up questions.

some very great advice above I was thinking it before i read through their posts!. You also must consider if these loans or lines of credit have callateral alot of times these cannot be settled and if you are here than that usually means you are in great need of help so your score may not be very high at this point as it is. Do you know your credit score? Alot of times when you have a lot of debt even when you are paying on time your score will suffer. Like the above post, settlement is faster and will save you more money. Consolidation will take longer so you need to find out how bad your sitiuation really is. face the facts on paper put it all down to look at. For me this was scary so many people dont do this for they just really dont want to know, but facing the facts is the first steps in correcting the problem.

Saying one is better than the other will very from person to person considering their personal situation. Mine for example was job loss + new baby on the way and massive credit cards. I needed to do something fast. A settlement company was my answer. It may not be yours. Feel free to repost maybe some more information and maybe someone could lean you one way or the other as to what thier opinion may be for your particular situation. If you can swing the consolidation payments and are sure of your job security, credit score wise your better off but it will take much longer