By Geoff Tofield, NBC producer

For Hard Times: A Nightly survival guide, Nightly News presented viewers with ways to keep afloat during these tough economic times in a two-part series. Some notes and tips from NBC producer Geoff Tofield, who produced CNBC's Carl Quintanilla's Hard Times segments, which aired Monday, Jan. 21, and Tuesday, Jan. 22:

There are hundreds of credit repair companies, many of which need to make money. Some of those are scams. Here's a reasonably safe place to start for those who want to look into debt help, credit repair, etc:
http://www.ftc.gov/bcp/conline/pubs/credit/repair.shtm

For our story, we spoke to the President of the National Foundation for Credit Counseling,  which represents a large group of non-profit community-based agencies (100 member agencies, about 900 local offices) that serve more than three million people a year, by their own measure. They provide no-cost but also low-cost services (depends on the need):
http://www.nfcc.org and http://www.debtadvice.org

We also spoke to a woman in Monday's story who received assistance from the Community Development Corporation of Long Island. CDCLI is under the umbrella of Neighborworks America, which was chartered  by Congress in 1978. Neighborworks is a group of 240 community development groups in all 50 states. It was established as a neighborhood revitalization effort helping needy and lower-income areas in everything from energy efficiency to small business assistance, and while they do that they are (obviously) helping lots of people these days facing rate adjustments and foreclosure.
Their Web site: http://www.nw.org

Watch Part 1 of the Hard Times series here.