I have four credit cards and a little over $20k in CC debt. Only one card is at a decent interest rate and with my Credit Union, the rest are between 20-30% or so. I'd say half of it is up to a few years old, the other half goes back many years.
I'm 35, live in Madison WI, went back to school a few semesters ago, and have between 1-3 years left depending on whether or not I go for a 4 year degree which I probably will. I'm currently working part time at a crap-paying job and hope to find something better for the summer - it's 29 hours/week at $9.35/hr. School is quite difficult and time consuming (EE) so I don't exactly have the time or energy to work full-time during the semester. At the moment, I am dead-broke and my cards are nearly maxed out, lately using them only when I absolutely have to for bills/necessities/etc.
I always make all my payments, somehow, but I'm now at the point where I'll no longer be able to. My CC monthly payments total around $700 or so at the moment. What should my first step be? I assume it's go to a credit counselor, but I'm not sure how to go about finding a good one and I've read some are not too great. I'd consider debt consolidation but only if it could very substantially lower my monthly payments, and I don't want to end up paying more over time than I would as-is. Something like Chapter 7 bankruptcy seems pretty drastic, but I would consider it if it were my only option for crawling out of this hole. Just not really sure what to do. And whatever I do or don't do I'm probably going to be missing some credit card payments for the first time in a few weeks anyway.
Advice?
Submitted June 06, 2017 at 05:57PM by dwiscb http://ift.tt/2qUMQXr
