Don't spend money you can't afford to pay off...
Really, it's not going to affect me much--I usually pay off 3-4 times the minimum payment on my credit card--and when i have spare cash, i pay off more of the balance of my outstanding debts and try to incur less and less.
Goodbye Callisto & Skaši, Hello Ishara:
2022 Kia Stinger GT2 AWD
The only thing every single person from every single walk of life on earth can truly say
they have in common is that their country is run by a bunch of fargin iceholes.
I just pay off the whole thing every month. I don't buy anything if I can't afford it and not paying off the whole thing makes for interest, which sucks.
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ToBoGgAn wrote:we are gonna take it in the ass and like it, cause thats what america does.
Slo2pt2 (Projekt Unknown?) wrote:One my SON is ADHD N.O.S and Autistic Spectrum Disorder. I will nto medicate him he will battle throught this himself and learn to control it.
My car payment is $170/month, on payment statement, the least I have paid is $250, the most if $375. If you cant afford it dont buy it.
- 2004 Cavalier - 124k, owned since new
^^^ Werd.
If you're only doubling the minimum payment, you're still not getting your head above water, and you'll still accrue interest.
The thing you have to remember is that they compund the interest monthly, so if you double your minimum payment, (figuring 18% interest, and the monthly 1% per month). you're only JUST keeping ahead, if you charge more, you're screwed.
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Dont spend anymore than I know I will have with my credit card, never missed a payment.
That being said as for car/home payments, the more over your minimum you pay, the faster it gets paid off, you have less interest build up and thus save more in the long run. Thats why putting a big downpayment is huge in finiancing a home.
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Or, upping your payment schedule.
Home and car loans are fixed term (for amortization), and fixed interest (well, usually unless you go with an adjustable rate). If you pay more upfront, it goes to reason that you don't have to finance it out, but, if you accelerate your payment schedule to bi-weekly or weekly, then you're actually cramming in an extra payment every month, and whittling down the interest that much faster.
Doubling your mortgage payment rate is great, but you have to be careful because it will probably bite you in the ass later because most banks have early pay-out clauses that charge you a fixed rate (usually 3% of the remaining expected interest) if you end the mortgage early.
Credit cards, on the other hand, are cyclic in nature because you can empty out a card, and then charge it back up... and never pay much in interest (like 1-1.5
until you start leaving it be, only paying the minimum. If your interest rate is over 10%, you're better off paying out totally every month.
I'm no financier, but that seems to be pretty sound theory.
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no credit cards at all!! well except for emergency other then that they'll get you in trouble
Semper Fi SAINT. May you rest in peace.
Just another way to screw customers. The wife and I have 2 credit cards each, 2 of them we don't even use and don't have a balance on them but the other two we had to use recently to pay for some car repairs (P.O.S. Cutlass) so they have a couple of hundered dollar balances at the moment and will take us a couple of months to pay off. My wifes card at the moment has a $10 minimum monthly payment and mine unfortunately has a $25.00 minimum monthly payment so it will affect me more than her but thats no biggie because as soon as I pay it off this time I'm going to cancel it because their dicks.
I got into credit card trouble in college when I was broke.
There is a huge problem with increasing the minimum payment like that. MOST people I know who owe on their credit cards want to pay much more than that minimum payment. Only a few are actually able to.
People like me, who still live check to check, can't pay any more than the minimum payment every month, no matter how badly I WANT to pay a lot more than that to get it paid off. So, when they increase the minimum like that, people like me are going to get screwed over...and the cc companies justify it by saying they are helping us? Bull crap. Not only will I no longer be able to make the new minimum payments, but now I'll have late fee's associated with it, which will just pile up.
Every single day I wish I could go back in time and tear up that damned credit card application I sent off. These bastards have gotten much more out of me than I've spent on the card.
But hey, at least I've learned from my biggest mistake. No matter how broke I am, no matter how appealing another credit card might be, I know I'll just get into bigger trouble, so I just shred them and throw it all away.
What did you buy when you were broke?
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ToBoGgAn wrote:we are gonna take it in the ass and like it, cause thats what america does.
Slo2pt2 (Projekt Unknown?) wrote:One my SON is ADHD N.O.S and Autistic Spectrum Disorder. I will nto medicate him he will battle throught this himself and learn to control it.
Glace wrote:What did you buy when you were broke?
Stupid @!#$. I was young and saw the credit card as "free money" since my parents were taking care of my bills. I had no spending money, so the card was used to buy whatever. The only big thing I ever bought with it was a TV, which I still have (wasn't a stupid purchase, per se, but technically, I'm still paying for it 9 years later).
Fiend:
You're utterly destroying your credit like this, and it's cyclic, you're going to work down the balances, and when you have no money, you're going to ramp it back up.
My advice:
1. take the card out of the wallet, (as well as any other credit cards you have) empty out your ice bucket, fill it with water, drop the cards in, and use whatever to suspend them in the middle. Freeze that sucker solid. (ie. DON'T SPEND using credit)
2. call up your credit card companies, and tell them that one is offering you a 0% lifetime rate on balance transfers, and is offering to raise your limit to whatever amount. Ask if they can give you a better rate (typically they'll dump 2-5
, if they don't do it, ask to speak to a floor manager and if they don't, ask to speak to a business manager - Get names, get phone #'s, Write down times etc. Repeat this process over the course of all the cards you owe on.
- Alternatively, you can ask if there is an option to buy down your rate, usually a $25-$100 yearly fee will buy down your rate a few points.
- another option is that you say that you're looking into asking your bank for a credit consolodation loan with afixed rate of 8% or line of credit with Prime +2.25% as your rate (which works out to about 6-7.5
, plus a bigger limit. They'll fall all over themselves to keep your business.
3. Go to your bank and find out about getting a Line Of Credit. It's usually lower interest, but it's fixed to the Prime Lending Rate plus whatever. Dump your high interest cards into that LOC, and go do #1. Then, (here's the kicker) put your pay cheque into the LOC, and move off $200-$300 (or whatever) into your savings/chequing accounts for the 2 weeks or however much you need to satisfy.
I was in the same fix, and frankly, I needed a cosigner to get my LOC, but now that I have it, I'm working off the credit card debt at a MUCH lower rate, and I've also been able to afford my house, and a few upgrades.
I own my own car, and while it's a little rough around the edges, it's solid, and in a couple years, I'll be able to afford or finance whatever I'd like.
If you're in that bad a mess, though, I would very seriously consider bankruptcy. It's not as bad a thing as you might suspect. It allows you to get out of a rut, and back into solvency. I might talk to your bank about that and your lawyer... do not start without consulting both.
Taking 9 years to pay off a TV is silly, man...
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I think this is bad. I work for a credit card company, and people can barely afford to pay the minimum balances now. I couldnt imagine if we doubled it. Also, i think credit is too easy to get, i monitor calls and hear all the time how people have like 20+ cards all at the Max. Its just insane. Credit Card Companies make a @!#$load of money, you wouldnt even believe it. I know at our site alone we write off nearly 1 million dollars a day in debt, and we still came out ahead something like 700 million dollars of profit last year, and thats just a small portion of pur business
TWENTY CARDS?
HSIOM!
That's credit companies gone berserk. Really.
I wouldn't keep a card except for emergencies, and to keep my credit report updated. And, a good bank will never lose money. They'll either get it from you, or get it on the uptake if you fail to pay.
That's the whole reason I advocate keeping credit cards to a minimum... they're the crack-cocaine of the money industry.
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Yeah, can you believe that. You should hear some of the stuff i hear or have heard while talking to customers.
More than once ive heard someone talking about how their wife was buying stuff without the husband knowing it, even going as far to hide it in a storage unit!!! Theyn she wouldnt let him answer the phone or open mail or anything. She was a shopping addict. Where i work we finance store cards, like Lowes, JCPenney, Sams Club, ecttt. People will owe like 7000+ dollars to JCPeeney and theyll be 75 on Social Security!!! I dont think i could spend 100 there!!!!!!
Then you have numbskulls like the guy who called when i was in our "hardshiop" department. He had run up a 500 dollar bill at JCPenney since he had gotten fired from his job. Not the best , but ok, look at his account, all had been charged at Eckards buying BOOZE!!!!!! The troll charged 500 worth of booze in less than a month after he got fired!! LOL
All kinds of crazy stuff we hear there. A LOTTTTT of struggling customers out there right now!
I believe this is a very good move. At least in the long run. It will force people to pay off there cards faster. But i do not think they should just suddenly raise it. They should raise the minium payment by .25% (or so) each month, or every other month or something like till they get where they want to be. Give those struggling some time work the change into there budget.
Promise that forever we will never get better at growing up and learning to lie
ok...you guys are saying 4% of what you spent is hard to pay off each month? what the hell you guys doing with your money? you should be paying off 100% of what you spent, not struggling with 4%...my god, don't be stupid and spend what you don't have.
Ryan: Ideally, yes... but, when was the last time you have $1500 to put on a car repair or what not? I can't do that, and I make a tidy little salary, I've had to put money on a credit card and take 4-5 months to pay off (well, on my CC first and then onto my Line Of Credit, lower interest rate). Most of the time people buy stupid stuff, and rack up debt like it's going out of fashion.
They do that while they're barely making ends meet, and getting drained by the revolving debt.
Ideally, you look at the way muslim finance goes: no interest taken or offered. If you don't have money to pay for something, you do without.
Right now, I have my credit card for emergencies, and I use cash or debit to pay for anything I need that's small (under $100).
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Matt, I've already cut up my credit cards, and I've paid one off already (it had about $2K on it). The other is being paid down as we speak. ...and it wasn't JUST a TV. When I was in college, I had no job and a weak allowance from my parents, so I used the card. My parents paid for some of it, and when I got out, I paid it pretty regularly. Then I got screwed out of a good job and had nothing for a month. Took me a LONG time to catch up, since the next job I took barely paid half.
As a result, I let the cc payments slip (for a looong time). Here and there late charges have added up, so much so that I had late AND overlimit charges. Only within the past year have I started paying regularly again. I've already called up the company (which is MBNA coincedently) and they have waived the overlimit charges each month so long as I pay regularly, and have offered me a lower interest rate. I can pay a tad more than the minimum each month...but not much more. Heck, I'm
still catching up from being sto stupid when I was younger. Now this (referring to the article in the fp)...it's not going to be easy...but such is life I guess.
NOTHING has been charged on a credit card in at least 5 years, but because of the way my job situation was, I was in a hole with everyone. I figured CC company was the least of my worries because I
needed power/food/transportation/place to stay first and foremost. Now that I've been promoted, making a LOT more money that I did, I've started paying all my debt off again.
Either way, I will not declare bankruptcy unless it's a last resort...and as long as I have a job, any job, my pride will keep me from that. Besides...I'm not so young, and definitely not so stupid anymore.
Credit Card companies are the devil...bar none.
True enough..
MBNA is pretty spotty though.. I'm not in any kind of mood to discuss MasterCard agreements, except, I have an insurance premium on each of my cards so that if I should lose my job, the minimum payments are deducted monthly up to the limit on my card..
It's about $1 per hundred on the card, and I have $5000 limits on them. I was in the same position as you were when I lost my job (that is, over a barrel, naked arse to the stars). At least I had that.
Now, don't get me wrong, I didn't put tons of cash back down on the card, but it was certainly easier knowing I didn't have to until I got work again. That might be an idea for a utility to look up.. it certainly saved me some difficult times.
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Hey i have a god idea- DONT OVERSPEND.
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