BrookValley
Lovin' The Homestead
Hi all! There seems to be a good deal of wisdom when it comes to finances here, so I thought I would pick your brains with a financial question.
I consider my husband and I to be fairly responsible and smart when it comes to money, but not nearly smart enough. We are extremely fortunate to be mostly debt-free; we have no mortgage, no car payments, etc. We (mostly my husband, though I do have some decent mutual funds) have a good long-term saving plan in place. Mutual funds, 401K accounts, a good education fund set up for a little one. However, like so many Americans, we have a good deal of credit card debt hanging around our necks like a dead weight. We don't really use the cards anymore; this is debt that has followed us since we were young. And stupid. It drives me crazy. Sometimes, literally drives me crazy. Every month when I make the payment on my one card (all of my husband and my accounts are separate) I want to cry. I can only make the minimum. I never get anywhere paying it down. My husband has 2 credit card accounts; he pays a little more than the minimum usually, and so has made a little more headway than myself, but not much.
Would it make more sense financially to obtain some sort of loan to just pay them off and be done with them? I have no idea what types of loans are available for this sort of thing and what the interest rates are like. The advertisements I see/hear for "debt consolidation" loans seem so shady to me. We have good credit and the rates on our cards are not terrible (8.99 on mine; I believe my husbands are 7.99/8.99). But we pay, combined between the two of us, close to $400 per month toward these cards. When I think of what a car payment would be if we got a loan for $15K (what we'd need to pay off all 3 of our cards) I know that payment would be less than $300....AND we'd definitely have it paid off in 5 years, instead of never, as the case seems to be when paying the minimums on the cards. Can you get a loan like this to pay off credit cards? Are the rates astronomical? And where is the best place to start looking? Our bank, or an independent company?
I know that there has got to be a better way than the way we are handling this now.
I consider my husband and I to be fairly responsible and smart when it comes to money, but not nearly smart enough. We are extremely fortunate to be mostly debt-free; we have no mortgage, no car payments, etc. We (mostly my husband, though I do have some decent mutual funds) have a good long-term saving plan in place. Mutual funds, 401K accounts, a good education fund set up for a little one. However, like so many Americans, we have a good deal of credit card debt hanging around our necks like a dead weight. We don't really use the cards anymore; this is debt that has followed us since we were young. And stupid. It drives me crazy. Sometimes, literally drives me crazy. Every month when I make the payment on my one card (all of my husband and my accounts are separate) I want to cry. I can only make the minimum. I never get anywhere paying it down. My husband has 2 credit card accounts; he pays a little more than the minimum usually, and so has made a little more headway than myself, but not much.
Would it make more sense financially to obtain some sort of loan to just pay them off and be done with them? I have no idea what types of loans are available for this sort of thing and what the interest rates are like. The advertisements I see/hear for "debt consolidation" loans seem so shady to me. We have good credit and the rates on our cards are not terrible (8.99 on mine; I believe my husbands are 7.99/8.99). But we pay, combined between the two of us, close to $400 per month toward these cards. When I think of what a car payment would be if we got a loan for $15K (what we'd need to pay off all 3 of our cards) I know that payment would be less than $300....AND we'd definitely have it paid off in 5 years, instead of never, as the case seems to be when paying the minimums on the cards. Can you get a loan like this to pay off credit cards? Are the rates astronomical? And where is the best place to start looking? Our bank, or an independent company?
I know that there has got to be a better way than the way we are handling this now.