Thursday, April 05, 2007
Credit Card Debt: How to Get Rid of It
This method is simple, but necessitates some discipline.
First, you have got to halt any new disbursement on your cards.
Second - you'll need to analyze all of your spending. You'll need to cognize how much extra money you'll be able to set towards paying off your cards.
Credit card companies generally determine the minimum payment to be 2 - 2.5% of the outstanding balance. So if you owe $1,000, for example, your minimum payment will be 20 - $25 per month.
Some portion of that $25 travels to the interest on the balance, some to pay off the existent balance. How much travels where depends on the interest rate. Your credit card statement will give you the exact numbers.
Let's say that $20 of the $25 travels to the existent balance. To pay off $1,000 at $20 per calendar month will take 50 months. Just over four years. You'll also have got paid $250 in interest alone.
Here's how you pay them off:
Look at the interest rates on all your credit cards. Take the 1 with the highest rate. That's the 1 you're going to work on first and we'll name it card #1.
After examining your disbursement you may have got establish some money to set towards your payments. All of this extra money to pay off your card debt travels to this 1 card. The thought is to pay as much extra to card #1 as you can. Until it's paid off.
Pay the minimum balances on all the other cards until card #1 is done.
Then take the card with the adjacent highest interest rate and add to its payment the sum of the payment you were making to card #1. In other words, direct the regular monthly payment you used to direct for card #1, plus any further amounts that you used to pay on card #1, plus the monthly minimum for card #2- all to card #2. Bash this until card #2 is done.
Then take the sum you were paying to cards #1 and #2 and add that to the payment on card #3, and so on.
Here's an example:
Let's state you have got four, maxed out, credit cards. Each with a balance of $5,000 ($20,000 total.)
Say the minimum payment on each card is $100 (yours may be different) making your monthly minimum payment sum $400.
Now let's state you have got $500 per calendar calendar month to pay these off, which you establish through analyzing all your spending.
Card #1 have the highest interest rate and you'll direct $200 per month to that card and pay the minimums ($100) on each of the others.
And you're not adding any new spending.
The extra $100 you're sending in to card #1 travels to the existent balance of the card, not the interest. This volition allow you pay that card off a batch faster. You might be able to kill this card in two years, instead of 5.
Eventually, card #1 is dead. The full payment, $200, that you were making to card #1 gets added to the payment on card #2, for $300 total. ($100 minimum plus the extra $200 from card #1.)
The balance on card #2 will be less than $5,000 since you've been making your minimum payments all along. Adding the $200 from card #1 to the payment of $100 that you've been making to card #2 will do this card travel away much faster than the first card did.
When card #2 is gone you take the $300 per calendar month that you were paying to #1 and #2 and add it to the payment on #3, which will now be $400/month.
When #3 is done you reiterate the procedure for card #4, but now you're sending the whole $500/month to that 1 card.
Obviously this system will take years, but at the end of that clip you have:
* Four dead cards (hopefully you cut most of them up,)
* Spending and budgeting subject earned from going through the whole process, and
* $500/month to set into a nest egg account or where ever.
Good luck!