new - am i missing anything?

iVillage Member
Registered: 04-19-2006
new - am i missing anything?
6
Wed, 11-19-2008 - 10:00pm

Hello!




iVillage Member
Registered: 11-17-2007
Wed, 11-19-2008 - 10:06pm

You need to bundle the loans and the bills and work that interest rate down. You are killing yourself in that interest.


It may take you a while but if you can take one of the little bills and transfer it into a larger credit card with lower interest I would do it.


Cut down on your buying Say to yourself all the time IS THIS SOMETHING I WANT OR IS THIS SOMETHING I REALLY NEED.


snowflake to the department store loans first get them paid off then take that money and send it to the credit cards.


Stop buying cold turkey if you have too the first stop in getting out of debt is not to add to it.


I hope this helps.


Mary Ann


Work on those interest rates If it take appling for a new card

iVillage Member
Registered: 01-25-2006
Wed, 11-19-2008 - 11:46pm

Hello and welcome!

Well, before any food and other variable expenses like gifts or entertainment or clothing and counting your lower rent and only $150 for gas, you only have $475 or so left for the month. You don't have much room to be knocking down the debts very quickly but there might be a little in there. Take a look at your variable expenses and see how that works for you.

That said, your car payment flew off the screen at me. That is a big payment for your take home pay. This is a tough pill to swallow and often you have to go backwards to go forward with that (because everyone is almost always upside down with that big of a car payment) but I would seriously consider your options for ditching the car.

As far as your question about what to pay first, I think that your circumstances make it such that it makes sense to knock out some of the smaller balances just to free up the cash flow for flexibility. You are currently spending $568/mo for debt service. I would let Best Buy and American General pay out in their 3 mos timeframe and throw absolutely everything extra that you can at the smaller of the 2 credit cards. My thinking is if you pay that off, they may make you another good interest rate offer and you could then transfer the larger balance over to that card (assuming they are held by different banks). I imagine that might take you the 3 mos anyway so then you'd have $280 a month to pay on the big cc balance, hopefully at a lower interest rate. That would be about 10 months or less and then work your way through loan #2 if it is still hanging around and then just work to obliterate the last of it in the form of loan #1.

I don't know what your current thinking is on new credit accounts but if your credit was good enough to qualify for the rates you have on some of your cards, you might qualify for a great 1 year rate on a new account. Might be worth it. I haven't looked at what is out there in terms of new cardholder offers since the economy went to the dogs but look at bankrate.com if you are interested and see what you can come up with.

You are doing fine. You don't have huge balances but you have a lot of smallish ones. Once you get out from under this, you are going to be in great shape. You'll want to focus on getting a good savings behind you and you'll be rolling right along. You've nipped this pretty well in the bud. Hope you'll post often!

Peg

iVillage Member
Registered: 04-19-2006
Thu, 11-20-2008 - 12:22am

thanks for the advice so far guys.




iVillage Member
Registered: 11-14-2008
Thu, 11-20-2008 - 1:16pm
It sounds like you are on the right track. It really is a matter of what you prefer to do first within reason. I would pick two of the smallest debts and get rid of them as fast as possible, then concentrate on the one with the highest interest while making minimum payments on the others. You have a lot of irons in the fire and if you slip up(not that you will but we all forget things) you could be incurring penalties for late payments. Divorce is tough, but you seem to be doing just fine. Just think how great you will feel as each debt disappears. Then concentrate on an emergency fund to prevent it from happening again.
iVillage Member
Registered: 01-25-2006
Thu, 11-20-2008 - 3:05pm

Why do you say you can't transfer the bigger balance to the other card? I would consider getting a new card. The hit to your credit will likely be negligible and you can close it again after you get all the cc debt paid off. $27/mo is a pretty good snowflake. Do make sure that you took into account any balance transfer fees but they tend to be waived on new accounts. I wouldn't go crazy and apply for a whole bunch but pick the one you think is best and give a try. You might get turned down based on debt/income ratio but if your other credit is strong enough it might work out fine.

Sounds like you're getting it well under control. Find a way to pay extra on that car asap so if you get in a wreck you aren't terribly upside down. You might see if you can purchase gap insurance in the meantime.

Peg

iVillage Member
Registered: 04-19-2006
Thu, 11-20-2008 - 8:35pm

The 2 ccs that i have now are from the same company, so they won't do balance transfers.