I am in way over my head.

This is exactly the place. If you a have a particular question or problem, post it and we will try to help you out.

You can also register as a member of the site, and a debt counselor in your area will call you with a free consultation.

Well I have alot of debt that I can pay for the most part but thats all. I have been for the last 2 years anyways. I am thinking of giving up. I have around 17k debt but i'm finding it harder and harder to pay. I'v been trying to pay the lowest debts off first but i'm not getting anywhere.
The smalest loan i have is 900.00 nothing right? Well i have been paying on it the best i can since I got the loan in march. 8 months latter my ballance is 940.00 due to late payments or something I just know i'v been giveing them 40.00 a month for nothing.
I dont even want to stay on the 6,500.00 visa i have.

My credit score is not so bad YET around 640 i think but I made alot of bad choices and i'm frustrated and none of the people I owe want to help me. Late fees and over the limit fees and pay by phone fees are all I ever get from them.

Just like everyone I didnt expect to get so far in debut I couldnt get out but i'm to the point were I feel cheated out of my money. I have had one card for over 4 years and I have payed its ballance off 3 times but the debt is still there.

I guess my question is should I forget my credit and start a life of paying cash or is there a way out?

Argon, I think when you talk to the debt counselor they may be able to help you. 640 is not a horrible credit score. I would like to have that. I hope you find the help you need here. KYSIDE38

First, 640 is a pretty good score, and you don't want to screw it up. Here's why: someday in the future, you will need credit (new car, home purchase, etc.). If you screw up your credit, you will be stuck paying outrageous interest when that time comes.

Not only that, but if you decide "screw it" and just stop paying, then you'll have all these places looking to sue you. Attorney fees and court costs can add $500-600 to each of your balances. Plus the interest/late fees/overlimit fees will keep accruing until 5 years from now when that $17k debt will turn into $34k. Then you will have REAL problems.

So get that thought out your head, it's not worth it to avoid the problem.

The formal name for interest is a time-price differential. That is, you pay interest for as long as you borrow it. If it takes you 10 years to pay a loan back, then you pay 10 years worth of interest. It is easy to feel ripped-off and cheated, but it is just the cost of borrowing other people's money.

Now let's get to the real problem. You have big balances, you are making the minimum payments, and your balances are going nowhere. How do we fix it?

Well, look at the $900 balance. At 12.5%, the interest on it is $9.25/mo. Add a $25 late fee, and your charges are $34.25, which can equate to 46.3% apr. Do you best to pay on time and avoid the late fees because that is where they really screw you.

If the interest is $9.25, sending them $40 would put $30 toward your principle balance. At this rate, that $900 card would take 24 months to pay off.

The real solution is to look at all your balances, and your income and other expenses. Find out how much money you have each month to pay back your debt and pay it off one card at a time.

If you can pay $100 to the $900 card instead of $40, then it will take about 10 months to pay it back. Then when that card is paid, work on the next one.

It takes some dedication and commitment but you can do it. If you care to send me a list of your balances and how much you can afford to put toward ALL of your debt each month, I will work up a mock plan for you.

Alternatively, these debt consolidation programs will work with your creditors to reduce the interest and come up with one monthly payment that gets distributed among all your creditors.

DebtCruncher you really know your stuff when it comes to racking up interest. Maybe I'll send you a list of my balances :D

Thanks so much for the advice. I guess what is getting to me is i can see my self going down hill fast if I dont do something and it worries me.

first off I dont know jack. Now that thats out of the way my idea is..

I dont make enough to pay much more then the min on all my debts and i know paying the min is not getting me anywhere so would it be stupid to let 4 people be late to pay off 1?

That would give me alittle extra cash p/month then in afew months when i get all the latefees and stuff cought up I could not pay 3 people and pay off 1 one.

Then I would have 3 people to deal with instead of 5. I work in sale and my per hour rate give me just over 1,600.00 a month that i can put on bills. We use my wifes check to live off of and right now the only "bill" bills we have are car insurance and cell phones whitch she payes.

All and all if we can pay it off now is the time. both our cars are paid off but since all my loans/credit cards are maxed I cant get a loan big enough to cover it all even if I use our cars as a lean or what ever.
I tryed to get one big loan but they told me something like my score was just afew points away from things getting easy.. I almost laughed


Round about I have
visa 6,500 30%
master 2,000 30%
sig loan 6,000 24%
sig loan 3,000 24%
PC loan 900 29%

They all have a thing where they jack your intrest rates up if you make late payments. That helps me out alot because since I was having trouble making the payment on time in the first place 6 months super high intrest really gets me in the mood to pay.

Paying on time is really hard for me. Some months i make enough some months I dont. I'm going to get with my wife when we have time and work some numbers.

Sorry if i'm rambling but i'm been trying to get help from my bank for along time and tonight the idea came to me and I found you guys so i'm alittle excited.

Night

That's a new twist that could work somewhat. Keep in mind that any time you're more than 30 days late, it will get reported to the bureaus. But they don't count that bad against you if you only do it once or twice, and the 30-day delinquincies don't hurt you nearly as much as chargeoffs or collections. Besides, after its paid, we can work on disputing the credit report to get the delinquencies removed (that's a whole other post)...

The other problem is when you miss one month, then the minimum payment doubles the next time around.

Give me some time; I am going to calculate two different scenarios and get back to you tomorrow.

Good night.

Argon--Welcome to the forums! You'll find a lot of good advice here! I see you've already got some. DebtCruncher is the master at calculations.

Still working on it...

Just a few more questions:
1) the "PC" loan -- was that a computer purchase? Also, is that a revolving line of credit (credit card) or is it an installment contract? If it is installment, how many months did they give you?

2) those are signature loans for 6K and 3K, right? What is the term (# months) they gave you to pay it back?

i have to know when i close my account at my bank which i hate to i have had this account for 19 years ever changed it till now. will teletrack be a monster howwill it affect my credit and what will be my out come to do i do not have the link for state law can you give it again.

Laverne--

Teletrak is just a reporting agency that sub-prime lenders use, such as payday lenders, rent-to-own furniture places, etc. Teletrak shouldn't be something you are worried about, especially sense you are trying to get out of the pdls mess, unless you are trying to take out another one.

Just off the bat, here is a simple table calculating your balances and the daily/monthly interest; I calculate the minimum payments based on 5% of the balance:

DESCR....BAL....DLY INT...MTHLY INT....MIN PMT
VISA...$6500...$5.34.....$160.27......$325.00
MC.....$2000...$1.64.....$ 49.32.......$100.00
SIG1...$6000...$3.95.....$118.36.....$300.00
SIG2...$3000...$1.97.....$ 59.18......$150.00
PC......$ 900....$0.72.....$ 21.45......$ 45.00
======================================
.......$18400....$13.62....$408.58.....$920


Here is just one scenario I came up with. This plan focuses on making payments to all creditors every month, not paying off one in lieu of paying others (I will come back to that later).

What I do is 1) add all of your balances ($18400); 2) take each individual balance and divide it into your total balance, this comes up with a percentage of each account to your overall debt; 3) multiply that percentage times the total amount you can pay each month (I figured it on $1400/mo). 4) The product is how much you should plan to send each creditor every month.

DESCR....BAL....%RATIO......MTHLY PMT
VISA...$6500....(35.33%).....$494.62
MC.....$2000....(10.87%).....$152.18
SIG1...$6000....(32.61%).....$456.54
SIG2...$3000....(16.30%).....$228.20
PC......$ 900.....(4.89%).......$ 68.46
==============================
........$18400.....(100%).........$1400


I put all the above #s into an ammortization table to calculate future interest on the accounts. (I could post those tables too, but would take up too much room).

BASED on these #s, if you could pay each creditor the amount above, you would have all this paid off, including the future interest, in 16-17 months.

My goodness!!!!!

DebtCruncher, you are awesome. I don't know how you found this website, but you have always been of great help ever since you are here.

Cheers!! You rock!!

Argon, welcome. You will definitely get the help (and support) you need here. The best of luck to you!

Debtcruncher, the name suits you WELL! To someone who is not good with figures (me), you are just amazing!

Wow DebtCruncher

Yes it is a loan from when i purchased a computer its not on a credit card. The 2 sig loans are different so i'm not sure. I really hate to ask you this but I checked on all my numbers today and was close but wrong. If its not to time consuming could you please show me a table with these numbers?

(PC) Hrsaccount 942.11 @ 27.99%
(Master) Capital One 2,000.00 @ 28.15%
(Visa) Bank of America 6,499.50 @ 32.24%
Sig Loan 1 4,977.99 @ 14.5%
Sig Loan 2 1,895.35 @ 14.5%


Thats 16,314.95

I cant get the info for the sig loans I pay about 175 /m on the big one and 100 /m on the smaler one.

I still havent talked to the guy that is goinig to call me but its the weekend so I didnt expect to hear from him untill at least monday but I think I am going to pay off the PC with my next 2 checks and on jan 1st start working the rest down.

Ardon, Welcome to the forums. Debtcruncher you are truly AMAZING!!!! Argon if anybody can help with these figures this is the guy. KYSIDE38

OK first consider the monthly interest:

DESCR....BAL....DLY INT...MTHLY INT....MIN PMT
VISA.....$6500...$5.74.....$172.20......$325.00
MC.......$2000...$1.54.....$ 46.20.......$100.00
SIG1.....$4977...$1.98.....$ 59.40.......$175.00
SIG2.....$1895...$ .75.....$ 22.50........$100.00
PC........$ 942....$ .72.....$ 21.60........$ 45.00
==================================
.........$16314...$10.73....$321.90.......$745.00


If you can make the minimum payments on the rest, and knock out the PC loan by January, that would be good to get it out of the way. Also consider that the signature loans are installment contracts, and have a set # of payments (they are also you lowest rates). It would be good to take care of the Visa and Mastercard first since they are charging you more interest, then come back to the signature loans.

So I have revised the table, taking the PC out of the picture, and making your regular payments on the signature loans. (A little bit of a different calculation because I'm not calculating payments on the signature loans as being a % of your overall debt).


DESCR....BAL....%RATIO......MTHLY PMT
VISA...$6500....(76.47%).....$860.29
MC.....$2000....(23.53%).....$264.71
-------------------------------------------------
SUB-T..$8500.....(100%)......$1125.00

SIG1...$4977.....(-----%).......$175.00
SIG2...$1895.....(-----%).......$100.00
==============================
........$15372.....(100%).........$1400.00

Using this schedule, it would take about 10 months (ammortized) to get those credit cards paid off. Altogether in those 10 months, you'd end up paying about $2750 in interest on the two cards.

After those are paid, you can take that money and put it towards your signature loans to get those paid off early.

Hope this helps, or at least gives you an idea of how to tackle those balances. The main thing, if you ever want to see your balance go down, is that you need to pay MORE than they are charging you in interest. Sending just the minimum doesn't really bring your balance down.

hi debt crucher ihave a lot things going on mstly the payday loans.

DebtCruncher

Thank you so much!!! This realy puts some light on what I need to do. I'm 23 and I just moved and changed jobs so i'v been playing catch up for some time. My new job is starting to pay. I am about to start moving in the right direction. I just hope nothing unexpected come up for the next 10 months. Maybe before to long I can move over to the credit repair forms then one day maybe even buy a house!!!

Thanks so much again i'll keep you guys posted.