The Money Dance: Negotiations
Originally published at Lane Ellen. You can comment here or there.
So, the first step is to talk to all of these credit cards and figure out what is going on with them. I’ve been paying my bills, but I don’t even recall what the interest rates on some of these are.
I’ve had a lot of credit cards over the years. I cut them up into slivers and keep them, and they fill the jars. Some are just old ones that have expired and been replaced. Others are ones I opened and closed, filled up and paid off. I have some vague fascination with the shards of credit cards, and I muse about conjuring some artistic masterpiece that is at once captivating and also tearing apart our myths about money and status. This artwork will at once represent the altruistic goal of recycling while denigrating our consumerist ways…yadda yadda yadda.
I have way too many fanciful goals in my life. What probably will happen is someone cleaning out my wretched apartment after I die will find all these sliced cards and say, “This woman had issues.”
ANYWAY -
I first determined the rates of my cards - gah! I thought anything over 25% was usury. Apparently not. Another one that I thought was really low had recent risen - for no obvious reason. The big kicker - a card that had some sort of “deferred interest special for 18 months” plopped a nearly $500 charge to the card. All that “deferred interest” since October was the 18th month. This is a card that I pay minimally to because it is actually my ex-husband’s debt. Still - it’s under MY name, which means *I* am on the hook, regardless of whether it is MY debt or not. So, he didn’t pay it off early. That affects me - not him.
I use www.mint.com. It’s a website that you can put in all your information regarding your accounts and it tracks your spending. It occasionally offers you ways to save through other credit cards. So I knew that I could get a lower interest card, at least with a 0% interest rate for 12 months, and then it could be 9.99% or 18.99%. BOTH of those are lower than three of my cards current rates, so I couldn’t really lose after 12 months.
I called the first card - will you lower my rate? Yes. From 28.99 to 24.99. Um, thanks. Go ahead and do that, and I’ll be transferring my balance to another card. I then signed up for the offer I knew I had, got it, and transferred that card’s balance to the new card. From 28.99% to 0% in 15 minutes. Success!
I called the second card - will you lower my rate? No. I thanked them and informed them that I’d be closing the card soon. I may transfer the amount to the new card once I get it - but it really depends. Failure.
The third card - the one with the mysterious rate raise - was fabulous. It was my Universal Card. I’ve had this card for the longest of all of them, and it had the lowest rate of all of them. I spoke with the woman, and while she couldn’t get me a better rate on that card, we discussed what I needed in a card, and we changed the type of card I used - which effectively lowered my rate by 3.5%, as well as getting rid of programs I didn’t want. Success! Plus, the service was so spectacular that I just have to stay with this card.
The fourth has a high rate because it is basically a store card. I had been making significant headway on the card until the deferred interest dump. I am currently up in the air about this one because I am making payments, and my ex is making payments. Technically that dump should be his, but I want to pay it off faster than he will be willing to. So, I sent a message to my ex to suggest a method of attack, and inform him that we could change our approach as well - whereby he sends me the payment till he’s paid it off, and then I will apply the money. Currently waiting on his response to that.
Then I downloaded the Free snowball calculator spreadsheet, checked my balances, interest rates, minimums, and how much I pay to them every month. It confirmed my hopes: that without any extra money (bonuses, etc.) I can pay off the cards in 18 months.
We shall see.