Wise Cotton
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- Got Cheered for Re: Which credit card debt should I pay at first?. November 16, 2020 7:07 AM
- Posted Re: Which credit card debt should I pay at first? on Debt management. November 13, 2020 3:59 PM
November 13, 2020
3:59 PM
1 Cheer
1. Stop saving so much. Apply those funds to your $4600 credit card. It's nice to have a little nest egg but if something comes up, you can use a credit card. Your savings may pay 1-2%. You are paying about 22% on the $4600. If you put $350 a month extra towards the $4600 cc bill, it will be paid in a little over a year...but don't pay it off. (I'll explain in item 4). Consider the credit card as your emergency savings account. After a year, you will start having around $1,000 a year in added income by the way of not paying that interest of $86 a month. 2. Once that $4600 card is paid off, continue to pay the same amount to one of the lower balanced cards. In another 4-6 months you will have another card paid off. 3. Now start paying more than the minimum on the $6873 & the other low balanced card. 4. Keep your credit score in mind. With a lower score, you are more apt to get better loan offers. To improve your score, you don't need to pay things off....just get the balance below 10% on each card. You also want to build "credit history" by having a high "average age" of standing credit. If you pay off a card and cancel the card, you reduce the average age of your credit. You do NOT want to do this. The credit agencies want to see that you can manage your credit, not just pay it off and have none. Also, once you get things down to zero, make it "almost 0". Figure out when your statement cutoff date is and pay off everything except $25-$100 by that date. Let the credit companies see that you are using your credit but that you have it under control. Let the balance every month be 1-3% of your available balance. 5. Join Credit Karma. It's free. You can check your credit every week and they tell you what has change to your account weekly. I was credit score challenged for years. I joined Credit Karma a couple of years ago. I'm looking at their app now. On November 14, 2019, my credit score was 657. Today it is 820! 6. Check your spending. When you go to buy something, ask yourself if you "really need it" RIGHT now or can it wait? If you decide not to buy something for let's say, $25, but felt you could have afforded it, put that $25 into your credit card statement as a special payment. If you are about to buy something online, get the order ready to go and then wait until the next day to actually place the order. Chances are that the next day you will realize you don't really "need" what you "wanted". Don't look at sales fliers. They are trying to get you to buy stuff you don't need. Hope this helps!
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