I'm a student who has some help for college expenses from parents. I don't want them to find out what debt I am in, and wish to take care of it myself. I'm an undergrad student that takes school and grades very seriously. During the school year I work 20 hours a week at $9 as that is the maximum I can handle with a full course load of Science/Math classes with labs. Here is my total of personal debt not counting govt school loans which are deferred. All of these cards are basically maxed out: ~$250 - 0% $1000 card at ~29% because of late payment/over limit that compounded itself out of control $400 Card at ~19% $500 at ~29% $1500 at ~25 My rent is $333 and utilities end up being around $100. During the winter heating bills really screwed me over, oil heat in this old house ruined me financially. My parents pay for my car and insurance. At this point I cannot keep up with the payments on these cards and am moving back in with my parents all the way across the country to live in their house for free and transfer to a new school -- all because of my financial problems. I've heard of being able to do a balance transfer so I can consolidate all this onto a card with reasonable interest, but haven't had any kind of credit card offers. Only ones with annual, monthly, or sign on fees. I feel that I will be OK financially living with my parents as I will have no expenses besides my bills, but wish to get rid of this debt as soon as possible. I'd like to be able to live on my own again, be financially responsible, and build a credit score for my future.
Well, wow, just today I got a late payment from Dell Financial Services. I had setup recurring payments to pay the minimum due every month, but apparantly this month there were two due dates in the same month -- with their auto-pay system it only pays once a month. It's just stuff like this that is keeping me in the whole. I saw the list of "bad credit" credit cards on this site, but I need some help. Is putting all this credit onto one card a good idea? At least the high interest ones?
Were your recurring payments set up by you with your bank, or by you thru Dell (or their lender) to do an automatic debit? If it was your error and not theirs, you might call, explain what happened, and ask them to waive the late fee. You are doing what you need to do: cut expenses, work to get income, pay off debt. You also need to realize (as you are starting to) that you need to actively manage your finances, since if you just let things happen, things easily get screwed up. As you work, you know how much income you are expecting when, and when each bill is due and for how much. You can plan your payments to most effectively pay off the highest interest accounts first, making sure you have sufficient to pay off at least the minimums on other accounts. As you get some history of payments, you should start getting better offers, which you can use to BT your rates down.
Well someone from dell repeatedly called me today, and of typical dell fashion, he was pakistani who could speak hardly any english. He was like a broken record and just kept asking if he could charge my account for my "delinquent" amount. Couldn't answer any of my questions at all. I called back later and got someone on the phone who waived the fee without me even asking her to. Thanks for your advice.
