The likelihood would be that you are paying a much higher interest rate on the credit card bill every month than on the mortgage. If you then contacted your mortgage provider and borrowed £10,000, adding £10,000 to your mortgage, you could then pay off the credit card. That would be debt consolidation. You are no more or less in debt than you were before, but the cost of servicing that debt will have fallen, making it easier for you to work towards paying off your debts sooner.

• Normally, it is not just one or two people, that someone is in debt to. They may owe money to the bank (mortgage or overdraft); credit cards; store cards; friends and family; council tax; landlords etc. ClearDebts.co.uk can help you. Firstly, we will look at your income and help you decide where to allocate that money best. Some debts may have really high charges, and some debts may have serious consequences if you do not pay. These decisions are not easy, but we help you to decide.

Then, we will look at how much money you would need if you wanted to pay off, in full, all the people to whom you owed money. Then we see how much spare income you would have left from your salary and all fixed costs such as your mortgage or rent, your food and heating bills etc. This will show how much income you have to service a debt consolidation loan and we will be able to work out how much money you can afford to borrow, at what interest rate, and over how long.

• We will then be in a good position to be able to find someone to consolidate your loans, knowing that you have the finances to pay off the monthly payments.

Debt consolidation can be an extremely quick and effective way of dealing with debt, especially if you have many debtors. It immediately releases you from the burden of having to find money at many different times of the month to pay lots of different people. You get one monthly bill which, most importantly, you know how much it's going to be and that you can afford to pay it.