How to make one loan payment instead of many

Normally we do not condone borrowing money and would rather save up before we make our purchases.   There are times however when it has become necessary to make the purchases on credit.  Credit being so easy to come by today it seems that almost every retailer has credit to offer through their own company.    The problem this can create is many bills coming due each month and the possibility of missing a payment on one.    If one takes advantage of debt consolidation loans all the payments can be made at once to one place.  In our case the payment required for the consolidation loan was smaller than the total payments of the individual loans.