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There is a lot of strange stuff on television late at night, and if you stay up long enough and do it often enough, you will see just about everything. One topic that comes up in advertising frequently is the offer to sell you information about free government grants. These grants, the advertisers tell you, are money that the Federal government is giving away. That’s right, they say, it’s free money that is there for the taking by anyone who knows how to get it. In fact, they say, the amount of money that the government gives away each year is nearly half a trillion dollars! The advertisement then points out that you can use the money for any purpose at all, including debt consolidation. Is Uncle Sam really giving away money to help you pay your bills?
Free money always has a nice ring to it, and if you can use that money to consolidate your debt, so much the better. What’s the story?
There is a shred of truth to the story; the Federal government does give money away in the form of grants. That part is true, and the product that the commercial offers to sell to you will certainly tell you how to go about obtaining some of that money. Unfortunately, the truth pretty much ends there. What the ads do not tell you is that the money is earmarked for specific purposes and is given away to people who wish to use it for the purposes intended. For example, if you have a way to irrigate the desert in order to make previously unusable land capable of being farmed, there might be some grant money for you. Ditto if you want to open a special school to help mentally handicapped Native American children. There are literally thousands of ways to obtain grant money. Again, each of these agencies that gives away money is doing so in order to meet a certain goal. They do not have money to give to you to purchase a new home, a Corvette or to fund your vacation home in Tahiti. They also do not have any money to help you pay or consolidate your debt.
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