“Hi Steve,
I would love your advice on how to get out of my debt. i currently have about 30k in credit card debt and only make 40k a year. i lease a car, rent an apartment, and pay for car insurance monthly. these expenses total about 1560 a month. on top of that i pay the minimum balance on all of my five credit cards. all but one of my cards interest rates are between 11 and 15%, with the one being 0%. at the rate i am going, i will be paying off my debt for at least the next 5-10 years. i pay all of my expenses monthly and have rarely been late on a credit card payment. is there anything i can do to reduce this debt? if i could get it reduced to half i could get the money to pay it all off at once. what are my options?
Thank you so much in advance for your help.
Jolie”
The Answer:
Dear Jolie,
Well there are things you can do but cutting your debt in half will leave you with horrible credit, land you in collections and possibly get you sued. The option you are talking about is debt settlement. According to current data only about 10% of people settle some debts while 1% settle all their debts.
I have a some questions for you. You can reply in the comments section below.
- Have you been able to save any money in a savings account or emergency fund to use instead of the credit cards?
- Do you know what your credit score is?
- Is having good credit important to you right now or is getting out of debt more important?
Please update me on your progress by posting updates here in the comments section of your question. I’m very interested in how this works out for you.
If you have a credit or debt question you’d like to ask just use the online form. I’m happy to help you totally for free.