Quote: (01-31-2015 08:09 PM)Checkmat Wrote:
I asked my dad for advice, and he told me that I make enough money that I shouldn't be in debt in the first place. Fair enough.
Your old man is right. When I made HALF your income I had no debt. And that's living in expensive ass LA.
If you need to get out of debt fast and you have decent credit here's the solution.
1) Get the Chase Slate card. It's the only major card I'm aware of that offers no balance transfer fee. They also have an introductory zero interest period which I think is 15 months. Transfer all your debt to that card. You then have 15 months to pay it off with ZERO interest.
2) If you can't get the Chase Slate card, go for the Bank of America mastercard. They have a zero interest period that's 18 months. Though they charge a balance transfer fee.
If you are making 80k a year you should be able to pay those debts off well before the zero interest term expires.
edit --
One more thing I forgot to say is that it's always imperative to build a good credit score and keep it at all cost. Once you have good credit, there's no reason you should EVER have to pay interest on credit cards again. My score is over 700 and my mailbox is flooded with credit card offers on a daily basis. These cards will usually have that zero interest for 6 months to 18 months. If you just need to make make consumer purchases try to make them on zero interest cards with a long period of time to pay off before interest kicks in. And when the zero interest period is done, cancel the card and sign up for a new one with zero interest. There's no need for a person with good interest to EVER pay interest on credit cards.