Debt consolidation?

Question

Hey ladies,
Just looking for advice. My husband and I owe about $9500 between our couple credit cards and are having a hard time paying a small payment each month. I was looking in to consolidating my credit. Has any one done this? Does this ruin your credit? I mean we are responsible with payments it’s just paying the minimum on the cards takes forever to pay it off. Please share your story of why you did. 
We want it paid off ASAP because eventually (sooner then later) we want to buy a bigger home. 
Thank you in advance!

Answer

It doesn't ruin your debt, but watch that the interest rate won't actually be worse than what it currently is.
My advice is to focus on one debt, the one with their highest interest rate and do whatever you can to pay that one off. Make additional payments, make a bulk payment here and there, etc. Once that one is paid off you can use the money you were spending on the first debt and pump it into another debt. And so on and so forth.

Answer

I actually work in credit card sales and literally restructure clients debt all the time. There are a couple of things you can do. 1. If your current home has equity, you could A) wrap the debt into a HELOC that will be paid when the home sells there are many with no application fees and no maintenance fees with interests much lower than consumer credit cards. B) do a cash out refinance and pay off all the debt rolled into your mortgage payment there will be closing costs with that. 2. You could balance transfer those balances to a 0% rate either with the available credit on your existing cards or apply for a new card with the longest 0% rate you can find (typically 15-18 months) and the lowest fee preferably 0% to move and no annual. But 3% is acceptable for a longer term. Feel free to ask me any questions you have!

Answer

I used to work with loans, if you do debt consolidation they let stuff charge off then try to negotiate your payoff after the fact. Ruins your credit for years possibly more than bankruptcy. A debt consolidation loan that pays everything off at once from the very beginning is much better.

Answer

We took out a home equity line of credit for our home. It paid off the credit cards and left us with a payment to the bank that was several hundred dollars less than what we were paying to the credit card payments, which we’d never logistically pay off because of the interest. The interest from the HELOC was MUCH lower.

Answer

We went to our bank and pulled out a loan. Ended up pulling out like $13,000. Had like a $300 month payment. Which was smaller than all the minimum payments. It was alot less interest on it. Cut up all the credit cards. Except 1. Only use that when traveling. That went down alot faster. Any extra money we applied it

Answer

Personally I'd look into snowballing your debt over a credit consolidation company. If you do go with a consolidation company it should be a non profit and not charge any initial it monthly fees.

Debt consolidation?

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