Paying off CC Debt

[zpcsc]

Hello, I've been playing with my cc debt for a while now. I've opened new 0% accounts as suggested on these threads. When the 0% is over I transfer it to another one with 0%, accounts that I already have open. Now with the situation that we are all in, it's going to be a little tougher to pay more than close to the minimums. We owe a total of $25k, I've also worked with my DH's available credit for the 0% cards. 

I am so tired of this debt! Our credit is good over 700's. I've thought about a personal loan since we receive lots of promotions on these, are these loans personally guaranteed? 

Years ago they weren't but so much has changed. 

Thank you for all the suggestions. 

 

[hegemony]

budgeting: https://creditboards.com/forums/index.php?/topic/52305-budgeting-and-saving-money-the-mother-thread/

 

SNOWBALL spreadsheet: https://creditboards.com/forums/index.php?/topic/380262-snowball-spreadsheet/

 

reduce expenses: https://creditboards.com/forums/index.php?/topic/45756-here-is-what-i-do-to-have-50-extra-a-month-for-cc-payments/

 

 

of course a personal loan is personally guaranteed. shuffling debt around, even at 0%, only makes sense if you have a clear plan to get it paid in full.

 

Have you been affected by the pandemic? if so, have you asked for a payment holiday? you could use one to move those payments to your highest APR card for a few months.

 

 

[kaylee34]

Consider that at the moment you’re paying 0% interest. Your payments go 100% towards the debt. You also have an extremely long repayment term with the minimums being somewhere between 1-3 % of the total debt after the 0% time expires. 
 

A personal loan will have a fixed repayment term of so many months, an interest rate between 6.99-18.99% APR (recent numbers I’ve seen) and usually higher minimum monthly required payments. Most installment loans are also structured so the interest is paid upfront with little reduction in the actual principal. 
 

In general, if you can keep playing the 0% BT game, you’ll be better off financially. 
 

As always, YMMV

 

Like Hedgemony suggests, you need a plan to pay off the debt. Without one, you’re just doing your wheels. Sock drawer your cards, take a hard look at your spending and define actual needs from wants and conveniences. Then draw up a budget and stick to it. 

[shifter]

It sounds like you've just been kicking the bucket down the road with the 0% game, not actually leveraging those deals to help you pay off your debt. 25k is a lot for most people. You're going to need to drastically reduce expenses for a couple of years to make this happen. 

[zpcsc]

On 4/11/2020 at 1:06 PM, hegemony said:

budgeting: https://creditboards.com/forums/index.php?/topic/52305-budgeting-and-saving-money-the-mother-thread/

 

SNOWBALL spreadsheet: https://creditboards.com/forums/index.php?/topic/380262-snowball-spreadsheet/

 

reduce expenses: https://creditboards.com/forums/index.php?/topic/45756-here-is-what-i-do-to-have-50-extra-a-month-for-cc-payments/

 

 

of course a personal loan is personally guaranteed. shuffling debt around, even at 0%, only makes sense if you have a clear plan to get it paid in full.

 

Have you been affected by the pandemic? if so, have you asked for a payment holiday? you could use one to move those payments to your highest APR card for a few months.

 

 

Thank you, I've called and they are able to put you on a 60 day freeze without incurring any fees. I will do as suggested. Also, we haven't used our credit cards for months, big lesson learned. 

[centex]

I'd be wary of using those 'grace' periods if you don't really need them...those internal remarks WILL come back to haunt some people down the road.  Not just on those accounts but also in the underwriting process on any new applications...

[Speedbird747]

On 4/14/2020 at 5:39 PM, centex said:

I'd be wary of using those 'grace' periods if you don't really need them...those internal remarks WILL come back to haunt some people down the road.  Not just on those accounts but also in the underwriting process on any new applications...

 

I have a concern about this too. Is there any hard evidence of an adverse effect despite assurances to the contrary by the creditor? 

 

I haven't done this on a credit card, but my car lease offered a deferred payment option. I intend to continue to make my lease payments during the deferral period from savings, but I wanted the option of a few months of breathing room in case things deteriorated. 

[shifter]

Hell, I took advantage of every deferment offered even though I don't need it yet. YMMV. 

 

But if you're pulling payments from savings that's silly IMO. 

[hegemony]

2 hours ago, Speedbird747 said:

 

I have a concern about this too. Is there any hard evidence of an adverse effect despite assurances to the contrary by the creditor? 

 

I haven't done this on a credit card, but my car lease offered a deferred payment option. I intend to continue to make my lease payments during the deferral period from savings, but I wanted the option of a few months of breathing room in case things deteriorated. 

welcome to CB and I LOVE your moniker!

 

I doubt it will lead to any type of adverse action. Keep in mind the banks would rather issue deferments than deal with late payments (lates and defaults are an accounting issue for the banks).

[hdporter]

On 4/11/2020 at 1:30 PM, kaylee34 said:

Like Hedgemony suggests ...

 

kaylee, please take this with a great amount of humor ... fwiw, his handle is "hegemony".  However, I'm so very tickled by your version ...

hedgemony (noun):  Leadership or dominance, especially over one's neighbor, achieved by growing a butt ugly hedge on your property line.   (that's my off-the-cuff definition)

 

Come to think of it, I think Bev and I engaged in a cousin of "hedgemony"

 

When we lived in the heart of Philly, where we had a postage stamp of a back yard, there was a tall, gangly pear tree in our back yard that grew small 1-1/2 " fruits (we assumed it was something like a suckle pear tree).  The thing rose past the first two floors of our 3-story house (row house).  We had an adjacent rich-bitch neighbor, with two empty lots on our side of the block, abutted by a double-width row house on the other side of the block (facing the next street).  She was active in the City Horticultural society, had a back yard that had been featured more than once in magazines (walled off from our street), and had a greenhouse as 1/2 of her 3rd story.

 

If she had been a decent neighbor, she would have been a very fascinating women.  Suffice it to say that she wasn't (and she was our neighbor for 19 years). 

 

To cut to the chase, Bev decided to see what she could grow in our back yard postage stamp.  We labored for days because the ground was filled with broken masonry and remnants of a former wall.  (The house dated to about 1830.)   She planted several variety of shade loving plants and flowers and sprinkled them generously with Miracle-Gro crystals.  She continued to fertilize with every watering.

 

The garden fared reasonably well, but never became a stunner.  When the third spring arrived, curiously the pear tree (which we had largely ignored) blossomed with larger and more vibrant leaves than we'd seen previously.  And, come summer, when the fruit started to show, it was much more abundant.  Before we knew, we had dozens of full size pears on the tree.

 

As summer progressed, the fruit ripened and softened.  We were first alerted to the first "pear fall" when in the middle of the night we were awakened by an infrequent pounding on the roof of the one-story kitchen shed that was attached to the rear first floor.  It wasn't long after before we were in the back "stamp" one day and heard cursing coming from the other side of the wall.  We quickly realized that a 1/3 of our tree crossed the property line and whereas the neighbor once had to deal with a few small rotting fruits in her garden, she now had to cope with 6-inch 2-pound "rotting pear bombs". 

 

We raised a toast to our neighbor that evening.

 

 

Edited April 17, 2020 by hdporter

[kaylee34]

59 minutes ago, hdporter said:

kaylee, please take this with a great amount of humor ...

Oh I’m like dying laughing over here! Damn auto correct kept trying to make it hedgehog but that one is even better! 

 

I’ll add that I know exactly what you’re speaking of with pear bombs. I have one of those trees myself that refuses to die. The entire tree is riddled with woodpecker holes and it’s ancient and I ignore it but every other year it produces massive amounts of rock hard fruit. 
 

Edited April 17, 2020 by kaylee34
Added stuff

[StarkRaven$]

On 4/14/2020 at 2:39 PM, centex said:

I'd be wary of using those 'grace' periods if you don't really need them...those internal remarks WILL come back to haunt some people down the road.  Not just on those accounts but also in the underwriting process on any new applications...

So glad you said this. My instinct told me the same so I'm glad I quickly paid of my appliance purchase with my new cc with 14- months 0%.

[hdporter]

1 hour ago, kaylee34 said:

Oh I’m like dying laughing over here! Damn auto correct kept trying to make it hedgehog but that one is even better! 
 

 "hege" is out as a shorthand ref to @hegemony.  From now on, it's "Sonic"!  😁

Edited April 17, 2020 by hdporter

[kaylee34]

46 minutes ago, hdporter said:

 "hege" is out as a shorthand ref to @hegemony.  From now on, it's "Sonic"!  😁

LOL!!!  
 

I really want that outfit in his avatar. I would soooo wear it someplace special. Like a town meeting at the feed store or the after church buffet at KFC. 
 

My dad always said if you can’t laugh at yourself at least once daily, you’re doing something wrong. He taught me well 🤡

[centex]

16 hours ago, Speedbird747 said:

 

I have a concern about this too. Is there any hard evidence of an adverse effect despite assurances to the contrary by the creditor? 

 

I haven't done this on a credit card, but my car lease offered a deferred payment option. I intend to continue to make my lease payments during the deferral period from savings, but I wanted the option of a few months of breathing room in case things deteriorated. 

It isn't about adverse action in terms of limit cuts but rather about increases down the road.  A consumer who is giving an appearance of financial troubles at the slightest hint of an economic downturn is NOT someone a bank really is going to be inclined to trust with other lines down the road.  And if you don't think they won't have kept a flag of some type in their mainframe records, you haven't been paying attention...

[cv91915]

22 hours ago, Speedbird747 said:

 

I have a concern about this too. Is there any hard evidence of an adverse effect despite assurances to the contrary by the creditor? 

 

I haven't done this on a credit card, but my car lease offered a deferred payment option. I intend to continue to make my lease payments during the deferral period from savings, but I wanted the option of a few months of breathing room in case things deteriorated. 

The front-line reps are giving you the info they've been trained to provide.  I'm not saying that they're being disingenuous, but that's all they could possibly do.  They won't be able to convey the nuances we're discussing.

 

Internal records will show all of the details of your account performance, regardless of what's reported to the bureaus.  

 

It would be naive to think that this could never come into play if you had future credit needs from the same company, but the "severity" is nothing compared to not making arrangements and then making late payments later.

 

I wouldn't lose sleep over what could happen when you ask for a credit limit increase at some unknown point in the future.  If you anticipate a real need for a deferral, any future risk is going to be a reasonable trade-off compared to the anxiety of not knowing how you're going to pay your bills now.

 

 

 

Edited April 17, 2020 by cv91915

[zpcsc]

I am happy to say that I have been using the snowball method, link was provided by Area Man, thank you so much!

I am almost finished paying my credit card debt! I should be done by February but I am doing my best to be done by 12/31/21!! 

I did use some of the 0% interest rate promotions, as I was doing which helped a bit. 

And thank God that we've had a good year in business. But I got focused and worked hard on our debt reduction. 

 

From $25K down to $4k in a little over a year! 

 

I had been hearing about the snowball method but until I was desperate, I didn't look into it. 

 

Thanks again! 

[cv91915]

On 9/2/2021 at 4:49 AM, zpcsc said:

I am happy to say that I have been using the snowball method, link was provided by Area Man, thank you so much!

I am almost finished paying my credit card debt! I should be done by February but I am doing my best to be done by 12/31/21!! 

I did use some of the 0% interest rate promotions, as I was doing which helped a bit. 

And thank God that we've had a good year in business. But I got focused and worked hard on our debt reduction. 

 

From $25K down to $4k in a little over a year! 

 

I had been hearing about the snowball method but until I was desperate, I didn't look into it. 

 

Thanks again! 

 

Congratulations on the progress, and thanks for the update!

 

$0 is soooooo close.  

 

 

[hegemony]

On 9/2/2021 at 5:49 AM, zpcsc said:

I am happy to say that I have been using the snowball method, link was provided by Area Man, thank you so much!

I am almost finished paying my credit card debt! I should be done by February but I am doing my best to be done by 12/31/21!! 

I did use some of the 0% interest rate promotions, as I was doing which helped a bit. 

And thank God that we've had a good year in business. But I got focused and worked hard on our debt reduction. 

 

From $25K down to $4k in a little over a year! 

 

I had been hearing about the snowball method but until I was desperate, I didn't look into it. 

 

Thanks again! 

awesome work!!!!!