We have been trucking along getting debt paid off.
We had a vacation weekend last weekend so we had some money set aside to do some fun things with the family. It was a staycation so no hotels to pay for or anything. It was super fun. Went to the aquarium with my daughter, went hiking, and went to the movies with my daughter. It was all relatively inexpensive and we had a good time.
Later in the week my husband received his 1,000th offer for a loan to consolidate credit cards. I know what Dave Ramsey says on the topic “It’s just moving money around,” “It doesn’t solve the spending problem,” and on and on. A couple things I have noticed while we have been actually serious about paying down debt this year is that our credit card interest rates are CRAZY! We are paying tons of money in interest each month. So I thought, let’s just see what kind of rates are offered and if we can get enough to pay off our credit cards.
Keep in mind, we have successfully not used our credit cards since last year. They are no longer in my wallet. We do still have them open but do not intend to use them. We have been paying 17.99-26.99% interest on each card. We have 5 cards. We have over $21,000 in credit card debt alone. All of this tells me that we should pay those suckers off ASAP.
So I applied. I had applied about a year ago and we were denied due to “balance on revolving credit too high.” But I hoped that this time would be different. The one we had received an offer for was approved BUT the payments were going to be about $100 more than our current payments AND it was only going to pay off 3 1/2 of the 5 cards so more per month and I was still going to have to make payments on 2 cards. Not ideal.
I did my research, applied for a few others, was turned down for a few others and finally got approved for one that was PERFECT. It is about $100 less than our current minimum payments. We got approved for enough to pay off all but about $800 which we should be able to completely payoff by the end of next week. The interest rate is also 15.99% which is less than we are paying on all of our credit cards.
We got the money within 2 days and I have already dispursed to the cards the money needs to go on.
While this may not be a Dave approved decision, this is going to be what’s best for our family. I truly feel that we have kicked our spending problem in the teeth and we are truly ready to get all of this debt taken care of. This loan will help us save $1,000s in interest.
Our plan going forward is to continue paying highest interest rate first. So this loan will be the first thing we throw money towards. We are super excited to see where our lives take us once we have all of our debt paid off!
