Why Your Debt Advocate Exists

We built Your Debt Advocate because we kept seeing the same thing happen to American families — and the people supposedly helping were funded by the people they owed.

Roughly three-quarters of American households carry some kind of debt. About 45% carry a credit card balance month-to-month. Most of them are getting their "debt help" information from credit counseling agencies funded by the card companies, debt consolidation lenders selling them another loan, or lead-capture forms that farm their contact info out to the same consolidation lenders.

Someone needed to sit on the consumer's side of the table. So we built a place to do that.

What's Actually Happening in Consumer Debt

The CFPB has formally found the two largest debt buyers in the country guilty of practices including time-barred collection, robo-signed lawsuits, and misrepresenting the legal status of debts — twice each. State AGs have brought their own enforcement actions. Pew research finds default judgment rates in debt collection lawsuits running at 60-70% in studied jurisdictions.

And the regulatory record almost never reaches the consumers it applies to. People being chased by Midland Funding or Portfolio Recovery have rarely heard of the CFPB cases that change their leverage. People filling out "debt help" forms have no idea their contact info is about to be sold to a consolidation lender that charges fair-credit borrowers 27-31% APR.

Most consumers don't know any of this is happening. That's the problem we're here to fix.

Founded by Damian Lanfranchi

Damian Lanfranchi, Founder of Your Debt Advocate

I built Your Debt Advocate because I saw a problem nobody was solving and I had the tools to do something about it. I'm not an attorney or some debt expert. I'm someone who knows how to research, dig into the public record, and turn what I find into something that can help regular families understand their actual options.

Your Debt Advocate is part of the Advocate Family — a portfolio of consumer protection education brands sharing infrastructure and editorial standards. The first brand in the family was Solar Home Advocate, which covers residential solar contract issues. Same playbook applied to a different consumer-protection vertical.

What We Do Every Day

Track the Industry

We monitor active CFPB enforcement, state AG actions, FTC research, debt-buyer regulator findings, and the day-to-day practices of the largest debt buyers and collection agencies. When something changes that affects consumers in debt, we report it — sourced from public record, in plain English.

Explain Your Rights

The Fair Debt Collection Practices Act, the Consumer Credit Protection Act, state statutes of limitations, federal protections on Social Security — most consumers have no idea what tools they have. We break it down in plain English, no legal jargon, no gating, no forms to fill out just to read an article.

Compare the Paths Honestly

Five common paths most families consider — credit counseling, consolidation, HELOC, bankruptcy, debt forgiveness. Each has real tradeoffs. We lay them out without pretending the credit counseling industry isn't partly funded by your card companies, or that consolidation doesn't trap most borrowers in 12-18 months.

Connect You With Help

If your situation fits a real legal-review or debt-resolution path, we connect you with senior debt specialists who follow the Federal Trade Commission's rules — no upfront fees, savings accounts in your name, written settlements. Free assessments, no cost, no obligation.

Publish What We Find

Every article, every comparison, every rights guide is sourced from public record — CFPB enforcement, FTC research, federal and state law. We publish what we find, whether it's popular or not.

What We Don't Do

We don't sell debt-resolution products or services directly
We don't represent debt buyers or collection agencies
We don't accept funding from credit card companies
We don't charge consumers for anything on this site
We're not a law firm (we can connect you with people who can help if you need it)
We're not a credit repair pitch — we don't promise to "fix" anyone's credit score

We're independent. We don't work for credit card companies, we don't work for debt buyers, and nobody pays us to say what we say. Our research comes from public record — CFPB enforcement actions, FTC industry studies, federal and state law — and we report what we find.

How We Make Money

This is the part most consumer-protection sites don't include. We're including it.

Your Debt Advocate operates a partner-referral model. When a family takes the Free Debt Relief Assessment and decides to enroll in a debt resolution program through one of our partner senior specialists, the partner pays us a referral fee — but only if the family actually enrolls and only if settlements close per Federal Trade Commission Telemarketing Sales Rule timing.

What that means for you:

The Free Debt Relief Assessment is genuinely free. No cost to you for the assessment itself, ever.
If you enroll, the senior specialist is paid out of the savings you build — not out of pocket. Their fees are paid as settlements close, not up front, per FTC rules.
Our referral fee comes from the partner's revenue, not from your wallet. You pay no additional fee for being referred.
We don't get paid if a family takes the assessment and decides not to enroll — including when we honestly recommend a different path (DIY, credit counseling, bankruptcy attorney). The honest recommendation is the right call anyway.

This is why we publish independent path comparisons even when they recommend paths that don't earn us anything. The brand only works long-term if the recommendations are honest.