Per blubirde's request, please share how much of your debt is from credit cards... and per my request, if you were in debt but are now debt free, please share how u did it! i'm not debt free, but my plan is this:
pay off highest interest rates first by applying as much expendable income to them as i can, so:
pay off cc1 @ 7.99% - will do this by April 15th
pay off car loan @ 2.9%
pay off student loan @ 2.77%
pay off cc2 @ 1.99%
it's super tempting to wanna pay off cc2 before the car & student loans cuz the balance is lower, but i know better thanks to suze orman!
All of my credit cards have 0% interest promotion periods for about 1 year. When the 0% is up, I transfer the balance to a new card w/0%. I get offers for them seriously every day in the mail.
quote: Originally posted by: bumblebee "how do you have credit cards with 7.99 and 1.99% rates? mine are all like 15-20%. "
hmm, i'm not sure about the 7.99% one, when i first got it it was 0% for a year, then up to 7.99%. the other one is a promotional rate for the life of the balance, the real APR is about 12% i think. i have fairly decent credit despite my debt (i'm considered "super preferred" by Honda!) and i think that affects ur interest rate.
btw, a bit of advice that some of u may not know (at least i didn't when i first got into the "promotional rate" game: most cards only offer the promotional rate for balance transfers but if u make charges on that card they accrue interest at the normal rate (usually higher than promo.). when u make payments it goes to pay off the lowest interest rate balance first so whatever balance u have from purchases u've made will sit on ur card until the lower interest rate balance is paid off. hope that made sense, but basically if u do a balance transfer to get a promotional APR, don't make any charges on that card!!
I pretty much did the same thing Crystal, paid off the highest interest cards first, did balance transfers when there were 0% promotions, and tried to spend less..
i did know that about balance transfers. i must have just gotten lazy lately about that, because i have transferred my balance before to get a zero rate, but not in a long time. actually, i had my card paid off every month for a long time but lately i have been accruing a balance again. i'll have to look around for one to transfer to.
Ah credit cards - horrid, no? They help when you're trying to make it through school but ouch, when you're done, they're like another loan payment. Starting in June I will be aggressively paying off my 2 cc's so that I can be debt-free, or at least close to it by the end of the year. How exciting! I'm buying a new car as soon as there are no more credit card payments to make. Yay!
I am happy to say I have ZERO credit card debt. All I have is our mortgage and my car for debt.
I was in SEVERE debt after college though, and I started out as a file clerk at a law firm after I left the military. I paid as much as I could every month (sometimes I paid twice a month due to my paycheck schedule). Once I got a raise, that raise went straight to my debt. I didn't travel (my one major $$$$ vice) for a few years, and I was pretty frugal. I got out of it in about 2-3 years, and I NEVER want to get back to that again.
May be we can start a new poll, "how did you get out of debt"?
I could use some info and suggestions.
My situation is not too bad, but is all credit card debt, besides I have to consider that I am not an American so I might need/want to move back to Europe one day, and that's money!
quote: Originally posted by: ico "May be we can start a new poll, "how did you get out of debt"?"
Hey ico, check out the site Karina recommended: creditboards.com, it's loaded w/ this type of info & lots of great links! I fell in love & registered after only 1 day of lurking!!
It's actually not credit card debt anymore because my husband paid it off with a really low interest loan we got through our bank...but it was around 10K, a varied amount my husband has carried since before I met him. It sounds bad, but we actually have that much and more in savings and IRAs/Roths/401K. As for the replacing loan, we could pay it off fairly easily, but for some weird reason my husband prefers to have some debt rather than let our savings go below a certain amount.
Our other debt is the house and two cars.
-- Edited by lorelei at 10:27, 2005-04-07
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