Debt Help

Pay Off Your Debt Without Ruining Your Credit Rating

There are lots of ways to eliminate your charge card debt. You could declare lenderruptcy, you could call one of those “secrets the charge card account companies don’t want you to know” places and really destroy your credit rating, or, you could follow my simple plan for paying off all your charge cards, while actually improving your credit score.

Now the plan is simple, but it is not easy. To make it work you are going to need to exercise a large amount of self control, and be committed to paying off your credit card account debt.

Paying off your debt is going to have to become more important to you than having the latest car, the biggest house, or even the nicest shoes. In some cases, to pay off your debt you are going to need to make some sacrifices in your style of living.And it won’t happen overnight.

Paying off your charge card debt is a lot of hard work, but the rewards are outstanding. If you follow my plan, not only will you pay off your credit card accounts, at the same time you will be building an emergency fund savings account. Imagine how it will feel to be debt free, and with money in the lender. Imagine not needing to worry if your car needs repair. Imagine what it would be like to on a first class vacation, and not have to worry about paying the bills when you get home.

I know what I am talking about. There was a time when I had almost $30,000 in charge card account debt. Plus a mortgage! 5 years ago I paid off my last debt, and I have lived debt free ever since. But that does not mean I am living the frugal life. Before I paid off my debt I was paying almost $2,000 per month in interest alone! (That included my mortgage, which I also paid off.) Paying off that much debt freed up a bunch of cash each month. Since I have become debt free I have taken a two week first class vacation to Belize, and paid cash! I have bought a car, with cash, and I have enough in savings that I will be OK for a long time if I happen to lose my job.

Now normally this would be the place where I would tell you to buy my book, or sign up for my seminar, but that is not what I am going to do! Keep reading and I will tell you exactly what you need to do to pay off all your debt and become debt free.

Step Number 1- Find Out Exactly How Much You Owe On Your Credit Cards

Get all your charge card statements together, and then using either a spreadsheet, or just a piece of paper, across the top create the following categories.Credit Card Name, Total Amount Owed, Interest Rate, Minimum Payment. Now using your charge card statements fill out the worksheet for every charge card account that you are carrying a balance on. Then add up the total amount owed, and the total minimum payment. Take a moment to just look at these numbers. Look at the minimum payment amount. What could you do with that amount of cash if you didn’t have to send it to your charge cards? Now look at at the total amount due. Don’t worry about how big the number is, don’t feel guilty about running up that much debt. But do accept that this is the amount of debt you have, and that you are committed to getting rid of it.

Step 2 – What to Do When You Can’t Pay the Minimum Payments On Your Credit Card

Now go back to that minimum payment amount. If you regularly pay more than the minimum payment, I will get back to you in just a minute. But keep reading if you want to really accelerate paying off your charge card accounts. If you can’t pay more than your minimum payment, or if you are not able to pay even the minimum payments on your charge card. Listen UP! You are spending more than you earn. As long as you spend more than you earn, you will only get deeper and deeper in debt. And it will only get harder and harder to get it all paid off. Starting immediately you need to spend less, and make more. Personally I find spending less quite a bit easier than earning more. But I will be writing more hubs later that deal with both of these topics in more detail.

But for now, first look to where you can cut back on spending. You may think that you have cut back as much as you can, but I can almost bet you have not. Sometimes it takes drastic measures to make a real dent in your spending. Taking your lunch to work and passing on the daily latte will certainly help, but here are a couple ideas that will turbo charge your efforts to get your charge card debts paid off.

Consider selling your car and using public transportation. If you are making payments on your car, this might be all you need to get on the fast track for paying off your credit card accounts. Just make sure you can sell your car for enough to pay off the entire debt.
The second big step you can take to increase your income without taking another job is to consider taking in a roommate. In my area you can rent a room in your house for $500 per month. Once again, think about how quickly you could pay off your charge card accounts if you paid an extra $500 per month.

Step 3 – Paying Off Your Credit Cards, Have a Plan

Pull out your spreadsheet and take another look at your minimum payment. Now decide how much extra you can put towards paying off your credit cards.If you can’t come up with an extra amount, then go back and read the previous paragraphs. For the plan to work in a reasonable amount of time, you need to be able to pay more than the minimum payment. Decide which charge card you would like to pay off first. Some people like to pay off the card with the highest annual percentage rate. That makes sense, because in the long run you will pay less in interest. Some people like to pay off the card with the lowest balance first. That way they will have the satisfaction of getting a card paid off in the quickest amount of time. Either way is fine with me, as long as you pick just one card that you want to pay off first, and stick with the decision.As you pay off each card, you will roll over the total payment into the next card you want to pay off.

For all of your credit card accounts except one, you are going to pay just the minimum payment…no more! This starting minimum payment is the payment you are going to make until the card is paid off. Over time, your minimum payment will go down, but the amount you pay on the card will not.

Now lets take a look at your extra payment amount. If it is under $12 take half of it and make that the additional payment on the card you are paying off first. That is right, I said half. Even if it is only $1. The other half of your extra payment amount you are to deposit in an emergency only savings account. Even if it is only $1. Now I know that most lenders will not open a savings account for only a dollar. Get creative, you don’t need to keep the money at a lender, but you do need to put it aside to be used only for emergencies. And I mean real emergencies. You biggest priority right now is to pay off your debt. Your emergency fund is to be used only for things you literally can’t live without. If your extra payment amount is $12 or more, I want to you split it in thirds. One third to paying off your debt, one third to your emergency savings account, and one third to fun money.

Step 4 – Automate Your Credit Card Payments

Now that you know exactly how much you will be paying on your charge cards each month, you can set up your payments so they happen automatically. Most banks will let you do this through online banking, or you can contact your charge card account company and they will set you with an automatic payment plan. With all your payments on auto pilot, you won’t be late making a payment, and you won’t be tempted to skip a payment. You just need to be sure that you have enough in the lender to cover your payments.

Step 5 – Pay Cash for Everything

Let me tell you about a very difficult day in my life. I had committed to paying off my credit card debt, and that meant not charging anything. How can you pay off your debt if you are continually adding to it? I was in the middle of putting in an above ground pool. It was May and the days were beginning to get warm. I couldn’t wait for my pool to be done so I could enjoy it. But on this particular day I realized that I needed some extra parts for the pool. I didn’t have the cash for it. I knew it could take weeks to save up the money for the parts, weeks that I could be swimming in my new pool. I am happy to say that I stuck to my plan. I made an extra effort to cut costs, and I did various odd jobs that I could find to bring in more money. In two weeks I had saved enough to buy what I needed to finish the pool, without adding to my credit card debt.

Paying cash for everything is the hardest part of the plan, and the most important. As the old saying goes, if you want to get out of the hole, quit digging! This was the most challenging part for me and for most people. But once you get in the habit of paying with cash or doing without, you wil find that it gets easier and easier. Plus you will be getting the satisfaction of watching your charge card account balances go down for a change.

The Final Step To Becoming Debt Free

Every once and again, most people will have a time when some extra money comes into the house. It could be a tax refund, a raise a work, even an inheritance you didn’t know was coming. Whenever that happens, just apply the one third rule. One third goes to paying off debt, one third goes to emergency savings, and one third goes to fun money.

A funny thing starts to happen as you learn to live on a cash basis, and as you watch your credit card account balances decline. You start to enjoy living within your means. You find that you are stressing less about money, and you might actually find yourself feeling sorry for the people with lots of expensive “stuff” that they bought with debt.

And when the day comes when you finally pay off that last charge card, you will have a huge sense of satisfaction, knowing that you have done what many people attempt, but few actually do.

Also, if you are looking for a balance transfer credit card to bring interest down, www.1-2-3-creditcards.com has the best credit card offers. I would advise starting with Discover credit cards or Chase credit cards.

HOW TO SETTLE WITH CREDIT CARD COMPANIES

Why should you listen to me? I had $75,000 in credit card debt and I settled it for $21,000.

If you have the money or can get the money, (friends/relatives) to settle with credit card companies…do it! Will settling with credit card account companies ding your credit? Yep. Should you care? Yes. But not so much. Obviously everyone is different…but every one’s credit is dinged these days, and people with outstanding credit can’t buy things like they use too. You can start rebuilding your credit right away and have it back enough to buy a house in a couple years.

QUICK THINGS YOU SHOULD KNOW:

The credit card account companies will send you a 1099 form for the difference for which you settle. In our case we will get a 1099 for $54,000 (ie income on our taxes) at the end of the year.

IF…you are insolvent (we are) ie, you owe more than you are worth. As I said, in our case we’ll get a 1099 for $54,000. But currently we owe more money (credit cards, house, a second mortgage) than we have. So the 1099…It doesn’t count against us! As an example, your house being upside down is good in determining this. We are upside down by like $66k…that put us over the top.

SO..if you are insolvent…it will not count against your taxes. It (the 1099) just goes away.
Do not charge things on you cards or take cash out for over $600 before you stop paying them. That’s fraud. If you have taken out large amounts, you better be able to prove it is not fraud, and you really need to wait at least 3 months before not paying your cards.

Your charge card companies will not work with you until you are behind on payments. I know…stupid…but true.

Do not threaten them (credit card account companies) with talk of bankruptcy. That’s your ace in the hole. Also don’t be arrogant with them when they call to collect. They are just doing their jobs and 9 out of 10 of them will be at the least fair and at the most understanding. Now when your debt is sold to a “collection agency”…then the rules change. But lets not go there…you will see why.

Lets Get Started

 Stop Paying Credit Card Bills Today!
KEEP VERY GOOD NOTES WHEN YOU STOPPED PAYING, AND THE INFORMATION TOLD TO THE CREDIT CARD COMPANY OVER THE PHONE.   THIS WILL BE VERY HELPFUL IN THE FUTURE.  

Between 1 month and 3 months they will call you and try and collect. They will actually be understanding and nice. Just be honest, say you are tying to get cash together but you don’t have enough to pay right now.

After or around 90 days start asking them things like “is there anything you can do, what options do you have?” They may or may not bring up settlement. If they don’t tell them your parents will loan you (whatever 15% of the amount you owe) to settle with any credit card company we owe that is willing to settle…don’t say 15%. Give them the amount, not a percentage.   If you have enough cash to settle, never admit it.  As far as they know you are going to borrow it.  Is this fair?  Yes.  Why?  If you can’t pay your bills and go bankrupt…the credit cards will get FAR less than you will pay them.  We were in no position to pay everyone back and not file bankruptcy without this option.

They will come back (almost laughing at you) when you tell them how much you can get.  They will probably say that they can’t do that…but they can settle for 85%. “Thank you, but I can’t afford that, so let me try to get some money together and see if I can get caught up”.  Is your response

This will happen back and forth for a month or two…it will get down to 50% and it will seem like they will not go lower! They will.

They may also give you a deal…where the conversation has led to them agreeing with you at 35%. The company person will say, “so you can pay 35%…let me take it to our managers to see if they can do it”. It will NOT happen. Unless you are in the 160-180 day range they’ll come back and tell you they couldn’t do it…but they would take 50%.

But between 160 days and 180 days the serious negotiations begin. We had 5 charge cards (Chase / Bank of America / Capital One),  Bank of America was the best, easiest to deal with.  I really appreciated that…no games.  At like 165 days Chase who all along said they could not go below 35% threw 45% at me…and when I hesitated dropped down to 30%. Deal!

There is EVERY bit of a chance we could have gotten them to 20% if not better. I’ve heard stories. We did not want to take the chance that it would go to collections (agency) and having to start all over with them.  Plus…lets be real. We owed the money, they didn’t force us to use the cards. But they sure didn’t mind charging us the loan shark interest rates fees.  Nobody is innocent here.. So don’t feel bad like you are doing a bad thing…it cuts both ways.

Once they settle…they will give you 3-6 months to pay (3-6 payments…usually 3-4)…you kinda can pick your terms. They will give you an agreement letter telling what they will do.

THINGS YOU SHOULD & SHOULDN’T DO:

SHOULD: Answer all phone calls. If you answer calls on say the first day of the week (or whenever), you might not and should not hear from them for another week.  If you avoid them they will make several calls a day and even start to look for alternative ways to reach you.

If you have voice mail (recorder)…put your first names in the message. This way they know it’s you, and they won’t try and call anyone else .

DO NOT give them ANY personal information on yourself or anyone in your family. They will ask about your income, your spouse…where they work…where you work. You are not obligated by law to answer their questions…other than the basic. Just tell them “it isn’t relevant where you or your partner works and that you are doing your best to get cash together to make a payment…that is what you are trying to do”.

Finally, the best credit card companies to work with in this situation are Discover credit cards and Chase cards.