Advice on CC debts

[JUHL 10+ year member]

my advice one CC debt: dont pay with plastic.....

 

[T9X 10+ year member]

do the right thing and pay them off as you can. don't listen to these fools who say just stop paying. Your credit is very important..especially if you go to buy a house one day. Things stay on your report for a long period of time.

Yes, not paying at all is definately not the way to go.

I learned that the hard way..

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[bigbangtheory 5,000+ posts]

multiple credit cards will kill you, however with that much credit already i bet it will be hard to get a consolidation loan.However you can get a consolidation loan using your car or something like that as collateral and get a hella cheap loan, just dont miss payments on that or they will jack yo ride

Finally someone said it.

You won't be able to consolidate your CC's unless you have enough collateral to put up.

I checked into it as I am a little over 5g's in debt with CC's, but won't let me do it because I don't have enough collateral. And you have to own it for it to work, not just making payments on it. So until you own something worth enough to put up for collateral, then consolidation loans probably won't work.

I am going to try and pay most of my debt off this next tax season, hopefully.

 

[tRidiot 10+ year member]

Closing credit cards you've paid off doesn't help, unless you have an inordinately high number of open accounts.... like 10+, or 5+ if you're in a lower income bracket. In fact, closing cards that have no balance is very likely to HURT your credit score if you have other cards still carrying balances. It's about utilization of available credit.... you want to have balances of less than 30% of your total available credit, and no single card near its max.

Keeping a balance on a card does not help. The only reason you should use a card for the purpose of improving your score is to keep the credit grantor from closing the account... every few years, some companies will "purge" accounts that have not been used. Why would they want to keep you active and pay to send you statements or new cards every couple of years when they haven't made a penny off you and you never use your card? However, if you use it a few times a year, even if you pay it right off, then you will not be in the 'inactive' list for a credit grantor.

Credit cards count as revolving credit.... consolidation loans count as installment credit, like a home or car loan. They are in different categories. In some cases, having an installment loan can be beneficial, if you have several revolving lines, but not installment lines... it diversifies your credit and looks better to most lenders and improves your score.

However, not all consolidation loans will be guaranteed to have lower interest rates... I got one last year that was about 16%.... virtually the same as the card it was being used to replace. As mentioned above, without collateral, you're likely screwed.

Just have to **** it up and work some OT for a while...