To balance transfer or not... working on 10 year debts...

[Anonymous]

I apologize for being so long winded, but i truly need advice.

I have been slowly paying down bad debts from the past. I currently have 3 large credit cards and 1 small(that i will be paying in full next month). My credit score is a 702.

The cards are capitol one, discover and providian. Capitol one is my largest at 7300 with a 10.9% interest rate.  Discover is 4800 with a rate of 5.9% till 2010. and Providian is 5100 with a rate of 7.9%. 

Now i am maxed out basically on C1, i keep paying and then using. i have 10,200 available credit on the other two. I am unable to pay larger amounts at this time because my husband recently lost his job and had to take a job making less money. So i right now take care of household items.

Discover is offering a 1.9% balance transfer with a 3% fee til july 0f 2009 and at that time will jump to my purchase rate of 17.9 and Wamu is offering a variable rate of 6.5 for life of balance with a 5% fee to transfer(they seem to be the only one who is so high to transfer).

My question is do i split up C1 onto the other two cards to eliminate it? Worse came to worse I would leave C1 open and come jluy of next year see what kind of balance transfer option they have to transfer discover back to it.  Minimum payments on Disc and prov would jump from 110 to 180 and 190 i added 10 dollars to each payment as i never pay the minimum.

I am just trying to find the most intelligent way to pay down my debts with what i can right now. yes my debt is great and it does become over whelming at times but there is no immediate fix and i just need to keep attacking it and stop using my card. However some times that is almost impossible(at least its not for frivolous stuff, just usually groceries and gas if desperate.)

[FretlessMayhem]

Hi JuJu, welcome to the forums!

I can only speak from what I would do in your situation. I can think of two different options.

1) Since you have good FICO scores, you can try applying for a card with a 0 percent BT offer. There are many of them out there. BOA and Citi come to mind for starters. I got a 0 percent Citi BT offer for 15 months on the Dividend Amex.

2) Open an installment loan with your local credit union. Use it to pay down your balances, and then repay the loan. That should help you out with your util, consolidate your debt, and give you one manageable monthly payment.

Since you stated you have a problem with paying down and then reusing your cards, maybe you should consider shredding them after you BT off the balances. That way you keep the positive TLs open, but don't have ready access to your cards. That should help with cutting down impulse purchases.

[Anonymous]

Thank you for that. However i have tried the bank loan.  My debt to income is too high. My mortgage is in both our names, which makes it look as though i pay it all, when in fact i dont pay it at all. My husband and i keep all our financials seperate which works out very well. 

I didnt mention that i had at one time 6 credit cards, and have been bt'ing on them for the past few years. This is the last of those cards. I have kept one open(i have had it for 11 years) with no balance on it and its very little.  Would you just keep opening cc's to transfer them with my history?

Thanks, i know this issue is small compared to others but sometimes its nice to have outside advice.

[Creditaddict]

as long as you are working on the debt and not just transfering the same debt over and over again, I would say keep bt to get better rates and work on getting it down.  For sure look for a 15 month offer (chase, Citi) that will help so you don't have to move for long time.