Hi, I have several credit cards... blah! I owe so damn much. Ok enough rant here is my question: AMEX I owe $2600 in their ext. plan at 24.99% interest. If the beginning balance on the statement is $2600 and I pay $600 during the month, shouldnt the avg balance be $2300 or thereabouts? I am planning to take $1000 of my $2000 in savings and pay some of this off. I FRIGGIN hate paying over $300 a month in interest to my cc's alone! Thanks for the help! Allen
AVERAGE DAILY BALANCE is just that... The average amount that exists in an account over a period of time. The number is calculated by adding the daily balances over a period of time (ADDING NEW CHARGES AND CREDITING THE PAYMENTS) and dividing by the total number of days in that period. Used in the average daily balance method for determining interest. THEN MULTIPLY BY YOUR 24.99% RATE... If you pay your payment with-in the first week...your ADB is less...WAITING to the last week makes your ADB higher...
I know... last year I missed a payment due to some horrible circumstances in my life. Amex immediately bumped me up to 24.99%. No matter what I say they wont do anything. It sux and with the amount I owe, I just am at such a loss. George, are you available for consultation over the phone? I would be happy to pay you. You seem to be super-knowledgeable and might be able to help me in the short-term figure out what to pay first, how to, etc. If interested e-mail me at allen074@yahoo.com Thanks, Allen
Allen, The most effective way to approach this is first of all, get as much of your debt on the lowest interest rate cards as is possible. On these cards, you pay the minimums. You then take the card with the highest interest rate and pay as much as you possibly can each month and make minimums on everything else. Once the highest rate card is paid off, do the same with the next highest rate and so forth and so on until they're paid off.
right now i have only about 800 available credit with citibank that i could do a 3.9 bt on i could also do a bt with capital one for 14.9 i just dont know what to do im about to send $500 to amex tomm, should I do this? thanks
Sure, pay $500 to Amex and then bt $800 to Citi. Get as much as you can on the cards with the lowest rate. $500 to Amex plus an $800 by and now you only have $1300? or so at 24.99%. Don't overthink it, this is just grade school math.
