Are you over your eyes in debt? Have you been wondering where to turn? Or have you been told to go to a credit counseling agency and don’t know how to find a good one? The National Foundation for Credit Counseling can help you. They are a member organization for credit counseling agencies and offer a lot of resources to consumers. Some of the highlights are listed below:

• Search for a credit counselor in your area
• Download a free budget worksheet
• Use miscellaneous calculators
• Read financial news on their site

The National Foundation for Credit Counseling’s vision is to create a national culture of financial responsibility. The foundation exists to provide their members with the resources they need to provide their clients with better financial education and services. It does not provide credit counseling itself.

The foundation has over 100 member agencies and has been around for 59 years. Their seal shows you that the counselors you are talking to have a reasonably high standard and have been trained well. After all, it would reflect badly on the foundation if they recommended counselors who did not do their job well. Many of their counselors provide free or low cost services. Once you find a credit counselor, you should still do your due diligence and find out what they charge for any services you may need right at the beginning.

The National Foundation for Credit Counseling will help you with housing counseling as well. This includes pre-purchase counseling as well as foreclosure counseling. Their members also provide reverse mortgage counseling for seniors. By law, only seniors are eligible for reverse mortgages.

A good place to start is their budget worksheet though. They list a lot of categories and your numbers are automatically added up so you can see, what your budget really looks like. It can be quite an eye opener to see it all listed separately. It may seem like only a $10 expense at the time, but those $10 expenses can add up quickly.

The National Foundation for Credit Counseling offers financial education classes through their members and basic information on their website. You can find tips and information on money management and savings, credit, insurance, housing, retirement and bankruptcy.

There are some really useful calculators in the Consumer Tools section. Need to find out what interest rate you have to earn on your savings in order to get the amount of monthly funds you will need in retirement? You can find out here. You will also be able to check what kind of mortgage you can afford and a number of other financial questions you may have.

In their Financial Literacy section you can find reports on identity theft, homeownership, and financial literacy. Who hasn’t heard of identity theft these days?  It is important to know how to protect yourself. Personally, I have had an account broken into and it took months to get the mess straightened out. It is practically impossible to totally protect yourself unless you only deal in cash and do not provide anyone with any personal information, but that is not realistic. Far better to learn how to reduce your risks than to be sorry later.

The National Foundation for Credit Counseling is trying to help in the nation’s effort to increase financial literacy among its citizens. Their information provides a good starting point and definitely some useful tools to apply to your own situation.