DebtEliminationTips

Have you ever contacted your credit card company trying to get assistance in reducing credit card debt.? This usually is a complete waste of 20 minutes of your life and generally does not produce results. Credit card debt elimination is something that you will generally need to do on your own as the credit card companies do not have any interest in helping you. Their goal is to keep you in debt for as long as possible , however there are things you can do on your own and I will detail them below.

Having the interest rate reduced on your current credit cards is a step in the right direction . This can be as simple as contacting your credit card company and asking for them to reduce your rate. You will face several possible challenges and ways to get around them :

You should have had at least 6 months of 100% on time and consistent payments to perform this step. If you care about your credit you will do this anyway.

First Option : hen you call in you will get a customer service representative who will almost always say NO. Always ask for a manager and never accept the first no , in a lot of cases the manager will work with you. If they say no tell them that you have several balance transfer offers but want to give them the opportunity to keep your business. This is generally effective and will yield you some results with your credit card interest rate, but by all means isn’t the end. At best they may take a few points off the rate which will help you with making a bigger payment.

 Second Option: If they do not budge on the first attempt there is a second thing you can do to lower your interest rate. Again you should be speaking with the manager to request the following:

Request an upgrade or product exchange to a different card possible a rewards card, usually they will check and accept this request. How did this help you.? You are already a customer and wont have to qualify for additional credit and the credit card company will automatically transfer the balance. What will happen is the rate on the new card will be the default rate, so say you had a card with a 24% interest rate. It will now be around the 12% range depending on their default rate, and this will help you in paying less interest. This is a win win scenario for you and is worth the effort to complete.

Third Option: Transferring your balances to a 0% or at least better card is an option. You still need to be concentrating on credit card debt elimination as the goal, transferring is a short term break and does not fix the overall issue.

Following these steps will put you on a faster track to credit card debt elimination. Do not get caught up in the debt consolidation game too much as it will just distract you from actually taking care of your debt.

Credit card companies are very unforgiving even in today’s economic issues that we are all facing. Miss one payment and they will increase your rates to a very high rate , this will cause each and every payment therefore after less effective. Now that you are in this situation doesn’t mean you give up , instead you should be working hard at correcting the issue . Here are the steps I would take to get your interest rates back down to a manageable level.

First off make sure you understand how you current balance to maximum allowed balance works. To keep from effecting your credit you should never charge more then 40% of your maximum credit limit. So if you have room on other cards and can get a decent balance transfer to a card you already own this would be a good option. The reason you would do this is to lower the balance on the card with the huge rate as it takes at least 6 months of spotless payments to actually get your credit card company to budge.

Now I realize that missing payments are not usually something you do on purpose but somehow you need to sit down and track your money so you do not miss anything, as a matter of fact you should have all your bills paid by the third week if possible.  at the 6 months mark you should be calling your credit card company and asking for a reduction in your interest rate . Never take the answer of the first person ask for a manager , Mention that you have balance transfers to other companies and would rather keep your money with them but the rates and charges are giving you little options . Chances are they will fight a bit but should budge at least a little bit .

If they do not want to play ball then ask then if they have any product upgrades or transfer to a different card such as a card with rewards. It is important ti use the terms product upgrade or transfer , they will more then likely find a card that they are able to transfer your balances . Here is the benefit as you are already a customer it is an internal transfer and you will receive the default rate for that card, this will likely take from the high 20% ratio to about 12-14% . This will save you a ton of money that you would have been loosing in interest charges on the higher interest rate card.

Now that you have successfully gotten your rates back down to a reasonable rate , do not miss a payment  as you will not likely have this option available twice.

Hope this helps and good luck

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Credit card companies are very good at doing one thing , keeping you in debt for as long as possible. But if you know what to watch out for and how to get around them you will save yourselves a lot of money and get out of debt faster.

Trick#1 Offering for you to transfer a balance to your card , when you already have a higher interest rate balances currently on the card.  Why this is a big deal is because of the way the credit card companies handle payments. Now when you make a payment it pays off the lower interest balance first before the ones with higher interest rates. Now the only one that that benefits is the credit card, as they will continue to collect higher rates on the original balance until the lower rate balance is gone .

How would you get around this issue, only transfer a balance to a card with no balance or one that you can transfer the entire balance to and this issue will be avoided all together. Not that transfering for a better rate is a bad thing but if you do it improperly you will actually end up spending more in the end.

Trick#2 The funny thing is my credit card just tried this on me, they sent me a deal to make certain debts split off on the card to pay on those first until they are paid off, sounds good right.? Well again in hind sight it does the same thing as trick #1 . It takes you focus away from your actual balance and allows them to sock you with lots of interest on everything else.

Trick#3 This is not actually a trick as it is a greedy measure to ensure they stay profitable. Never ever ever make your payment even a day late. they will sock you with the most interest that they can legally causing you to not be able to make an efficient payment. There are ways to limit the amount of interest you pay on your credit cards, this is the practice I show all my clients to allow them to save money regardless of interest rates.

Trick# 4 Credit card companies will periodically offer you the ability to go a month without making a payment , do not fall for this technique and please make sure to go ahead and make your payment. This gives them another 30 days of interest on your full amount owed..  so bottom line don’t do it.

These are very common things credit cards will do to keep you in debt for as long as possible, but you can fight back by planning things correctly. Planning a proper debt elimination , debt consolidation, debt reduction plan will go a long way in reducing your debt fast and increasing your credit.

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With all the financial problems in today’s society it is easy to attempt to reach for solutions. Sometimes the solution you find looks like the answers to all your problems to your debt issues, but in the end does not provide the desired effect.

Everyone has seen or possibly gotten advertisements to consolidate your debts into new loans. While the terms always look better on paper, does it actually provide you a better deal long term.? The usual situation is for you to take several different loans and wrap them up into a single loan with a reduced payment. Now who wouldn’t jump at an offer like this.? better payment so obviously it is a better deal for you right.?… WRONG ! . There are many things you should be considering before you jump into debt consolidation, please do not get me wrong as I believe this will greatly benefit you if it is done correctly. I will discuss a few of the obvious things and offer some possibilities .

Lets say you have 3 cards with the following balances and rates:

Visa Card with 7500 (Minimum = 180) balance with an interest rate of 14% , discover card with 2000 (Minimum= 75)balance with an interest rate of 10,4%, and a master Card with a balance of 1200 (Maximum = 25) with an interest rate of 16%. You have a total of 1700 and are offered a flat interest rate of 9% with a minimum payment of 220 , while this is a decrease in your minimum is this actually a smart move long term.? If you plan on making the minimum payment as it is offered to you then it will not benefit you long term, so how could it benefit you !

The reason that it will not benefit you is your are starting a new loan at full interest and will pay more . Now lets say you get the better rate and still plan on paying your original payment , applying this amount of extra principal will now make sense . The reason you should be very sure you are going to be able to accelerate your payments before consolidating debt. If you do not do this you be right back in debt if not more than you originally started with before consolidating.

Now here is spin on this to think about before you consolidate your debts, get organized and prepare a proper budget and have your ducks in a row. Start analyzing your debts lowest to highest and determine how much money you have available to pay every month. Start with your lowest amount as it will go the fastest and apply everything you have available on this debt, everything else gets the minimum. Now that you have set the tone go ahead and look into debt consolidation loans. Once you have the debt consolidation loan pay the minimum by the third week of the billing period, and all additional funds the week after your next month posts.

Why would you want to pay that way you ask…   Thanks for asking …

When you pay your minimum at the end of the month you are essentially paying 30 days of interest on the full amount of the loan , by paying any additional within the first week you are reducing your balance by that amount thus reducing that amount of interest you will pay for that month. If you do this each month you will start to see a rapid reduction in your principal and the interest you pay.

So in conclusion to this article if you are consolidating and plan on paying the reduced amount DONT WASTE YOUR TIME as it will not provide you the full benefit.  If you need to reduce your expenses to make ends meet start with what you have first and if you need assistance contact a good financial consultant who can assist , Feel free to contact me if you don’t have one available and I would be happy to help.

Now if you are doing to be able to make a bigger payment I would say go for it as you will be making a dent in your debt and it will have made the most benefit.

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Debt Elimination is a very obtainable goal if you understand some key concepts, I will be discussing one key piece here today. In our previous post we discussed the importance of having a proper household budget created , if this hasn’t been done please review my previous post on budget creation .

Now we will consider how knowing our budget comes into play in obtaining our goal of debt elimination. I have a task I would like you to complete before reading on as it will help you fully understand why it is so important for you to consider eliminating your debt.

1. Take a handful of your Credit Card bills, Car statements and review them carefully. Interest rate is certainly important but we are not concentrating on this at this time, you will hopefully understand why in a few.

2. Take the payment you made and subtract the interest charge giving you your actual principal reduction off of your balance. What you are going to see is a huge number difference, credit card companies have this formula down pat and this is by design. Now for the part that should motivate you, take the interest charge and multiply it by 10. This is the amount of money you are giving away in 10 months, in most cases this figure is staggering especially considering you probably have several interest accounts doing this same thing. This is the sole reason most people cannot get out of debt.

Now that you have completed this homework assignment , lets now consider what we are going to do about it. If you have not realized by now you are not making efficient payments and until you correct this your debt issues will never improve.  Now is the time for us to get to work in correcting this so that you can breathe easy and stop giving away your retirement money, you have accumulated this debt and must morally pay it off. But it doesn’t need to cost you your retirement , even though your credit card, car , mortgage companies will gladly take it from you. I will now lay out the most powerful things you change today that will change your financial future.

1. Identify all your interest accounts from lowest balance to highest, we do this for a reason as I will explain as I go along.  Remember as I statetd before you are not making efficient payments, I am fairly confident in this even without seeing your numbers. In order start making efficient payments we need to start attacking the piece that is causing you to stay in debt, we will use a systematic approach to wipe out all your debts. So how exactly will we accomplish the goal of complete debt elimination, we will use a combanation of techniques that will all the same common goals. Follow the process we show you and you will systematically break the interest cycle on your accounts , this will allow you to make more efficient payments . You will pay less in interst and more towards principal every month which will drastically reduce the time you stay in debt . The goal will be to continue to pay the same total amount on all your debts in total but will shift the dollars around to make the payments with the lowest balance more efficient. Let me briefly explain why we are concentrating on the lowest balance, understanding that we will not pay any less for out total debt . Heres an example to help you understand how this will impact your end goal .

Example: You are paying 2000.00 a month total , 1100.00 for your mortgage, 250 for your car, 275.00 for credit card one, 175.00 for credit card 2 , 120.00 for your department store card, 80.00 for your Best Buy card. You are strugglimg to get put of debt but can never seem to make a dent before the next emergency arises. This is actually how the credit system has been  designed and for one reason, keeping you in debt for as long as possible . Now lets flip the coin here and show you how to break the interest cycle  on your credit cards and how this will benifit you.

Proposed solution: You will always pay the minumum on all cards except for the lowest balance card, so as the minimums are lowered on any cards lower your payment on that card and increase the payment on the lowest balance card. Why is this important ! making an 80.00 payment on a card that charges interest will be like throwing money away … can you imagine how bad the numbers will look on debts with higher balances. Here is how we will accelerate your payments going forward , follow these steps and you will start seeing results within the first month .

1. To start the process you will need an additional 80.00, even if you have to save a while it will be worth it. You will make your normal scheduled payment at the end of the month, then start making regular weekly payments to your card with the additional 80.00 (20.00 per payment ) that you have saved up. Here is what will happen, each payment that you make will reduce your principal balance and thus the interest charges will be reduced immediatly. You will first notice that your interest charges will go down faster then ever before and then your minimum will start to follow, howver do not lower your payment . If you lower your payment you are playing with their deck of cards, it is time for you to deal your own hands.

So the instant effect will be that you will be increasing your principal payment on the card with the lowest balance. Lets now add the second effect as discussed breifly which I will now go in deeper details. In this example we have 3 cards that will adjust their minumums based on balance, typically you will see a drop of about a dollar a month. So lets go with this information for the moment and assume this is correct, this will give you 3 additional dollars to add the lowest balance card . Now doing some simple math this will have increased your minumum by 30 dollars, you will now be making a much more efficient payment and the balance will decrease faster and faster till gone. Obviously adding to the amount you pay will increase the efficiency and allow to start tackling the other cards faster. Each balance you eliminate will give you more efficiency as you will be adding the previous payment to the current minimum (paying weekly - divide paymetn into 4 equal payments) . It is not efficient to try and tackle all your cards at the same time, you will not have the money to do so and it will not achieve your goal as fast.  Yes you will probably succeed in lowering your minimums but will not systematically liquidate your debts fast .

The information in this posting may seem a little confusing at first but trust me once you get it wou will be on your way towards total debt freedom. My company helps our clients accomplish this task on a regular basis so feel free to contact us if you need help planning your debt elimination plan.

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