3 things I considered before consolidating my debt
I was completely overwhelmed! I felt like I was making payments that were making any difference to the principal amount. At one point my payment were almost $500 but with a high APR that money was not helping.
Let’s take a quick step back.
For more than one reason I found myself in debt with a maxed out credit card. I was having a hard time keeping up with the payments and even checking the balance made me feel depressed. I was doing my best to follow the Dave Ramsey Baby steps but I felt like I was going nowhere fast. So I decided to take a debt consolidation loan to give me some relief. A lot of financial gurus don’t agree with this but I want to share my personal experience with this. I am not giving you advice on what to do with your debt but I am just telling you how I handle mine.
Here are three things I consider before signing up for a Payoff.com loan.
A debt payoff plan- Please don’t take a debt consolidation loan if you don't have a concrete plan of exactly how you are going to get out of debt. Don't let this loan dig you even further into the whole. Before I took the loan I was already following a debt snowball method, I had successfully paid off my car loan and another personal loan that I had. I decreased my monthly expenses and worked a side job to increase my income. All I needed now was a lower APR so that I could be able to pay the loan off faster.
The APR- My credit card APR was high AF! So I needed a loan that would offer me an APR that was at least half of what I was currently paying for it to be worthwhile. When I contacted Payoff.com they offered me a rate I was comfortable with. The monthly payment was pretty high but I knew that the goal was to get out of debt fast!!! I took a loan with a 36 month term with the plan to pay it completely off within half that time to save on interest.
Behavior - Debt consolidation is not a bail out that you can do without changing your behavior. You have to improve your overall thinking about money in order for this process to really be helpful. Consolidation loans are not a personal finance strategy where you can run up a bill and then consolidate it to get relief, think of it as a lifeline for extremely desperate times. In order to make any significant change in your finances you have to understand that your attitude about your money must change.
This was not a quick decision for me. I thought about this for two month before actually taking the loan and I considered a few companies before I selected Payoff.com. Think long and hard before you go this route and have a plan for your debt.
Good luck in your fiance journey!
