I know I haven't been updating, but I have been insanely busy. We are caught up on the mortgage but still behind in our credit card payments. Bad news is that Amex sent our account to collections but all the other creditors are willing to work with us. After 3 hours of phone calls, I was able to establish the following:
- Citicards has agreed to stop all late fees + finance charges for one year, 0 % interest rate and monthly payments of $57.
- Discover has agreed to stop all late fees + finance charges for one year, 9.99% interest rate and monthly payments of $135.
- WaMu has agreed to stop all late fees + finance charges for 6 months, with interest at 10.99% and monthly payments of $100.
DH and I are determined to pay off WaMu by the end of the six months. Then we will just continue to snowball onto our next card. Since DH is going to be getting a bonus in February, in addition we will have our tax return in mid February, we are hoping to save $1,000 and use the rest to pay off the WaMu account.
The funny thing is that when we were paying on time every month, none of the above creditors would work with us to reduce the interest rate on the cards. It wasn't until we weren't able to pay the cards after I lost my job & we stopped paying in order to keep our house, then they were eager to work with us. It makes me very angry at myself for allowing us to get in this situation but also very angry at the credit card companies who wouldn't lower the interest rates in the first place.
1 comments:
at least you took the steps to remedy the situation. sounds like they basically gave you the same offers that they would had you gone through a debt consolidation program. so that's a bonus! the perks of debt consolidation w/o having that on your credit report, plus not having to pay fees to the consolidation program.
i wish you luck. i know what it's like...i was out of work for 6 months and watched our credit cards creep up and our checking account dwindle. it's definitely hard.
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