Caryn tried everything to get out of debt. But the credit card companies kept winning. Every time I start to make a dent on my credit cards, something happens, and boom, I’m right back charged to the max. It’s hard to move $15,000 of debt. For a while I was putting the odd $100 into a savings account and just paying off the minimum, but then I noticed that sometimes my finance charges were bigger than the amount I was putting away. So that was losing money. Before I save any more, I just want to get rid of this debt. It hasn’t helped that my back is bad again, making it hard to work. Since I couldn’t work, I decided to figure out everything there is to know about credit cards, all the fine print, and at least get the best deal I could. I had about five different cards, all with different interest rates, and I got obsessed—with getting a better rate, a bigger grace period, with all the new offers. I figured that some have to be better than others, right?
But it is hard to tell what’s the best deal. They charge every which way. One card sent me a bill saying, hey, you can skip this month’s payment. I thought they were doing me a big favor, but no. They charged interest on the money I should have paid. When the bill came the next month, it had grown by two finance charges. If I had known, I would have paid the money the first month. One time I thought I found a really good deal—5.9 percent. Turned out it was 5.9 percent on the balances I had transferred, but much higher on cash advances
and new purchases. I would have been better off staying with the company that charged me 9.9 percent on everything. Then there was that so-called grace period. I learned the hard way there, too. I thought that no matter what I bought I would have twenty-five days to pay it off before I was charged interest on it. I was Out with a friend and she wanted to buy an anniversary gift for her parents—we were at an art fair and she saw this wonderful sculpture she wanted to buy for them. She didn’t have her credit card with her so I said I’d use mine and she could write me a check and I’d just pay the bill when it came. Done. When I got the bill, I couldn’t believe it. They began charging me interest on that sculpture the day we bought it. But they had told me there was a grace period. When I called them up they said no grace period for me because I carry a balance. Only if I paid off the card every month could I have the grace period. Also, no grace period on cash advances; I found that out the hard way, too. Cash advances cost the highest interest rate, plus a fee on top of that—about 5 percent of the amount I withdrew just for withdrawing it. I hadn’t even thought of that. So I went back and checked. Already this year I had paid $220 in fees for cash advances.
I guess it’s all there, in small type, but who can figure it out? How do you get Out of credit card debt?