Just as no ship can sail without a plotted course and no plan can take off without a flight plan, no homeowner in foreclosure can contemplate a successful journey to save a home from foreclosure without a comprehensive plan. No one plans to fail and lose their home; it is that most families fail to plan at all before, during, and after they have missed their first mortgage payment. The mission of every reputable foreclosure assistance company should be to help such homeowners put together a plan and then guide them through the completion of that plan.

At the most basic level, the level of the desperate family speaking to the loss mitigation or legal professional, planning is nearly always easier and less complicated than people expect.

The first place to start is by assessing where each homeowner is right now. This includes what they own, what they owe, what they earn, and what they spend. Of course, this is nothing but collecting baseline data; it does not deal with what the family wishes to do to get out of foreclosure or how they are going to do it. But this gives both the professional and the homeowners a clear, shared understanding of the first, most basic thing that anyone beginning a journey needs to know: exactly where they are starting from.

From there, a sort of wish list is created, detailing exactly the most preferable means of solving the crisis and how to begin recovering financially afterwards.

This is also a pretty straightforward process because it focuses on a few choices to be made. What do you want to do with the house? Sell it? Or keep it? And if you decide to keep it, how much can you afford to spend on it per month? Do you qualify for any government programs or assistance through local private charities? If you work with the lender, would a repayment plan be affordable? Or is a mortgage modification the only option? What would you do if you could?

Then the professionals and the family get out a calculator and see if they can turn those goals and dreams into a clearer picture. Some questions they will answer will be, How much will it cost for any solution? What is the gap between where you are now and where you would like to be? How much time do you have to accomplish this? Can we get you from here to there?

If the loss mitigation company finds out that the homeowners can get to where they want to go, then there is already a strong base to build a plan on. If not, then the homeowners may have to consider some trade-offs. Maybe they can get an extension of a sheriff sale but will not have enough time to sell or refinance. Or they may be able to refinance but would have to give up the extra car in order to meet the new mortgage payments. The borrowers will have such decisions to make, but when this process has settled, the basics of a plan will have been framed.

At this point, the assistance company and homeowners will begin to rely more heavily on the specialists -- the lawyers, loss mitigation professionals, and financial experts. They will be the ones negotiating with the mortgage company, its attorneys, and possibly even the courts and government officials, working out the technical ends of the plan.

The most important point for homeowners to consider is making sure the company they are working with delivers a plan that is complete and does what the parties agreed upon. Borrowers should stand up and request the assistance company to keep sending the experts back to the drawing board until the plan is just right.

Then it really becomes an issue of giving the plan the right amount of resources in the right time frame in order to complete it and stop foreclosure as efficiently as possible. Of course, as circumstances change, the plan may have to change on the fly, but homeowners should be able to follow through and meet their own financial commitment to saving the house.

In a nutshell, this is how the experience with a reputable loss mitigation company should work. What can not be described is the tremendous weight of concern that is lifted from homeowners when they know they have a first-rate plan in place. No one can relieve borrowers of the responsibility for their own success, but a comprehensive plan and a compassionate, informed assistance company can take away much of the anxiety involved with foreclosure situations.