The day I have been dreading for years is finally here - I can't refinance my wug of debt at 0% or 2% anymore. So now it's time to pay the piper, for the CC companies to get even with me for living off them for years now, to the tune of 12% and 14%!! But I can't afford to pay that rate, not without a fight!
So I'm entertaining ideas on what to do next! Every time I look at the taxes and penalty for withdrawing from my old work plan from a job that ended in 1995 that was SUPPOSED to be a savings plan, (a good bit of it is after-tax money), I get extremely shell-shocked. It seems like they force you to take money out of both before tax and after tax at the ratio of assets, which certainly wasn't the deal when I was actively employed at that company.
So my wife is still getting 0% offers even though she has no income, but she doesn't want the debt in her name. But that seems like the only easy way out, although I assume she will have very small credit limits. Discover has a nice deal at 4% until 21014 I think - that should give us time to get it paid off.
Let this be a lesson to those of you out there struggling to stay out of holes like this!
Where the sidewalk ends - the end of the 0% game
January 21st, 2009 at 02:20 am
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If you are in too deep you may need to go bankrupt. Last resort but if you have no means to pay back the money.....
Best of luck. I know how it feels!
January 21st, 2009 at 10:14 am 1232532844
But I suppose this was needed to make me face the music, since as long as I could surf 0% or 2% credit, there was not NEARLY as much incentive to pay it off. One credit change that DID help was to require bigger minimum payments, I think 2% of the balance, which did help me pay it down this year, but Christmas and some other big expenses like car repair jacked it right back up, so it was just robbing Peter to pay Paul.
What worries me now is that since BoA has slashed my available credit, my FICO will dive and they'll jack me up to truly usurious rates, and I won't be able to get cheap college loans for my daughters. This is a mell of a hess! All that will be left is to raid my retirement savings, so I better start staking out my cardboard box and underpass right now before all the good ones are gone.
So job one right now is to convince my wife that it's time to get REALLY serious about cutting back. She tends to think I'm scamming her when I say we're in trouble - a bad situation indeed. Listening to Maxed Out has certainly helped me appreciate the gravity of the situation, and that was written BEFORE the credit collapse!
Thanks for the moral support, and sorry to be such a Debbie Downer, but I really appreciate the fact that a lot of you have been here and gotten out through savrifice and hard work.
And frugaltexan, I don't remember the poem but I love that title - as well as Maurice Sendak's "Where the Wild Things Live".
And PRICEPLUS, I don't think bankruptcy will be necessary, but raiding the reitrement accounts probably will be.
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