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Every year you plan to avoid the
credit card
fiasco, and even make a wholehearted attempt to
purchase all of your holiday gifts with cash. If
you’re reading this article, chances are you ended
up using your
credit cards
more than intended! Don’t despair though; there
are some tried and true methods of fixing your
holiday credit card slump that you can put into
action right away. Here are some strategies to
climb out from underneath the holiday credit card
slump- and help you pay off those purchases
quickly so you aren’t still paying for them by the
time the holiday season rolls around again next
year.
Use Introductory Offers to Your Advantage
After the holidays many credit card companies
release special introductory rates to entice new
customers to apply for their cards. If you can
find one that offers 0% interest on
balance transfers
for a year, you’re in! You can transfer your
holiday debt from the various cards that you used,
and pay it off without hefty
interest rates.
Another benefit of this technique is the fact that
you’ll have a single payment even if you had used
several credit cards for holiday shopping. Once
you combine all of them on the new 0%
balance transfer
credit card, you’ve got a single, monthly payment!
(You might consider closing some of your other
credit cards).
If you are unable to find a 0%
interest rate
on balance transfers for twelve months, you might
be able to find a six month introductory offer.
This is still worth the time and effort to
transfer your balances as you can work to pay them
off before the six months is up (or at the end of
the six months move the balance to a new card with
a 0% balance transfer offer!)
Credit Card Checks
If you don’t qualify for a 0% interest
introductory balance transfer offer, you could
consider using the checks that often come with
your credit cards. (Sometimes you have to request
them from your credit card company). While the
interest rate might not be zero, and it may not be
any lower than the card that offers the credit
card checks to you- if you have balances on
several credit cards, writing a check to pay off
each card means you would only have a single
monthly payment. In the long run, you would save
immensely on interest and
finance charges
by having a single account. In addition, paying on
a single account instead of three or four (or
more!) will help you pay off the outstanding
balance much faster.
Request Lower Rates
In some cases, credit card companies are able to
lower your interest rate just because you’ve asked
them to! It certainly doesn’t hurt anything to
pick up the phone and call your credit card
company’s customer service line to request a lower
interest rate. When you’ve gone overboard with
your holiday spending, you can really save on the
total amount you end up repaying just by having a
lower interest rate.
Get A New Card
Ideally, you will want a card that will allow you
to move all of your other credit card balances
onto, and at a 0% balance transfer rate. There are
times when you can’t get approved for the best
offers, or times when you just have more
outstanding debt than the offer allows you to
transfer.
If this happens to you, you might consider getting
a new credit card that will allow you to transfer
your entire debt from all of your other cards, and
one that has a reasonable interest rate on the
transferred balances, so that you can start making
a single monthly payment rather than several.
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