SOS. Wracked up a ton of credit card charges last month. Have three credit cards. One is fully paid off. One I can make the min payment. The last is Amex gold and I can’t pay it all down. What to do?

likefunny
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I assume you realize it is much more important to realize the underlying causes of this to make sure it never happens again rather than the immediate situation.

That being said, you're curious about implications:

1. If you're not careful, doing this once can make it easy to become a habit. Stop now, stop early.

2. If you struggle to pay your credit cards off, your credit score (if you're not familiar, think of it as your adult GPA) will begin to decrease. This will make it harder to qualify for loans/ mortgages in the future if you want to buy a home, car, or go back to school.

3. By not paying your bills on time, you will have to pay LARGE sums of interest on your overdue bills. If you think of the opportunity costs, if you can avoid paying that interest (by paying bills on time), you could invest that interest instead and see exponential growth in your wealth.

Not trying to scare you, but a dose of reality is the best medicine right out of college.

likehelpful

Here's how I would use Ramsey for this situation: read all about him until your confident you have debt under control. Once you know how to stay out of debt.... Start learning about how you can use debt to you're advantage! Using other people's money to make money for yourself is a great way to increase your net worth, but ONLY if you have a very strong understanding of what you're getting into, and how you can get out of it.

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C’mon you gotta tell us how much you spent so that we boring old people who are paying off mortgages and contributing to HSAs can live vicariously through you.

likefunnyuplifting
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Take out a personal loan to consolidate debt to a lower interest rate. That way you also only have one balance to pay and keep track of

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For the immediate problem, try
1) contacting Amex to see if they have an option to pay the balance over time
2) signing up for Credit Karma to check your credit score and see if there are any good balance transfer offers you are likely to qualify for. If your score is still ok now, you probably can, though even the run-up in your utilization might have already hurt you.

If your score is already marginal, credit karma can help figure out which card issuers are more likely to approve you, so that you only have to apply once rather than spamming lots of cards (since too many inquiries is also bad for your score).

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For the future, just say no to bottle service, or limit yourself to 1-2 special occasions per year where you are splitting the cost among a good-sized group.

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Yup. Trust me lesson learned :)

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Get the discoverIt card and transfer the balance. 0% apr for 14 months. DM me for a referral if you want. That’ll shave off like $20 for you. I get $20 too.

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As a last resort, can you get a pay advance from work? Ask family for emergency help?

Keep your ego aside and ask for help. It's better to be honest and listen to a few words of anger/wisdom from your parents rather than ruin your credit score and pay 25% interest on your balance

Radical honesty and direct feedback is a huge component of consulting and if you can't even take ownership of your mistake in front of your parents how will you do it in front of random partners?

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You can take a loan out against your investment portfolio so you can immediately pay back your credit card without having to sell anything.

And you’ll get a better interest rate for the loan as opposed to paying interest on your credit card

I think amex gold has a payment installment feature of some sort - not sure if it's only activated on a case by case basis. Investigate this further

Cash advance!

Find a 0% APR card and balance transfer

Take out another credit card that offers a 0% APR. load it up on Venmo and send whatever you owe to a trusted friend/family member. Have them send the amount back and use that to pay off your credit card.

You only get hit with a 3% service fee upfront and will have longer to pay back the amount due on the 0% APR credit card.

Why not just pay it off with the 0% then payback the credit card it 12 months before you owe interest?

Get a personal loan from sofi or upstart

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