Tag Archives: credit card debt

Do Debt Consolidation Loans Work?

Consolidation loans, or consolidation of debt may work for you in your goals to get out of debt. Consolidation has some benefits, but it also have some risks as well. Find out if consolidation loans would work for you. To consolidate your debt, you would take out a new loan that covers the cost of all of your pressing debt. The new loan pays off all of the others, leaving you with one loan. This consolidation loan must still be paid off, of course. Consolidation loans can make it a little easier to keep up with your debt, since it … Continue reading →

Three Reasons Why Low Interest Credit Card Transfers May Put You in Debt

Many of us seek to take advantage of those low interest credit card transfer offers. With a low interest credit card transfer offer, you can take the debt you have on one credit card and move it over to a new card that gives you a lower rate of interest. With lower interest, you will save more money, right? If your credit score is still decent, you will find yourself getting a lot of these offers in the mail. Switching from a 12 percent card to a five percent card seems like a great way to speed up your recovery … Continue reading →

Five Signs that You Are Living Beyond Your Means

You could be living beyond your means and not realize it. Why is this a problem? Well, when we live beyond our means, we can quickly run up debt. This debt can snowball until it becomes hard to manage, a real crisis. That is why it is so important to recognize the early warning signs and make the changes that are necessary to get your finances back on track. Sometimes it seems as though you are supporting your lifestyle and don’t have a problem paying for anything. After all, your credit cards aren’t being turned down at the store, and … Continue reading →

Surviving without Credit Cards

Getting rid of all of your credit cards is one of the strongest messages you get when you are trying to get out of debt. The reason is that credit cards allow us to spend more money that we should, essentially taking out a loan at a very high interest rate that compounds and compounds and can easily get out of control. In previous generations, it would take a lot for someone to consider going in to debt for even something as substantial to quality of living as a house. Once credit cards came along, people were willing to go … Continue reading →

Your Thrift Store Purchases Can Affect Your Credit Cards

I read a very interesting article on CreditCards.com this morning. In it, the author explains that making credit card purchases at certain stores, including thrift stores can negatively affect your ability to get credit as well as how much credit you will get and even interest rates. Basically, although the credit card companies can’t see exactly what you are purchasing, they may consider it risky behavior if you spend money at casinos, fast food restaurants and thrift stores. Okay, let’s put aside for the moment all of that data mining and how scary it is that there is all sorts … Continue reading →

Two Tools to get you Started

Several times over my twenty five year marriage I’ve tried to set a budget. Hubby and I both would sit down, get motivated, write down a bunch of numbers and set good intentions. At the end of the month we’d be surprised when our buget and our spending didn’t match. Finally, we got a clue. Actually, we took a class that helped us see where we were going wrong and taught us how to budget. We were budgeting, but allowing ourselves to go over budget – just because we could. As soon as we got a few tools, we were … Continue reading →