debt-advice

The letter came today. Capital One. The envelope was thin. I knew right away that the stiff piece of plastic I had been hoping for was not inside. But I opened it up anyway. Sure enough, there was the letter:

“Dear Mr McGowan, thanks for your interest in Capital One Prime + 1% low interest rate credit card. Unfortunately you’ve already spent way too much on other, must more expensive credit cards so go screw yourself. The end.

We Don’t Give a Shit
The Bank”

My heart sank as it usually does every time I try to deal with my credit problems. Another avenue of lowering my interest rates, and therefore getting out of debt had been extinguished. And it was painful. But when one door closes, another can open.

Consolidating credit card debt is not easy, especially if you can’t get a home equity loan. The problem for alot of us, (especially these days) is that credit cards are unsecured. They had no problem giving you lots of credit at 17%, but if you actually had the nerve to use it, you’d find yourself paying some outrageous amount of interest every month, and the balance never goes down.

So you look for an alternative, a consolidation loan. But your credit is shot. Because you used the cards. So your balance never goes down. This is called the vicous cycle of bullshit credit motherfuckerdom, and if you are as caught up in it as I am, then you know what I mean.

So what’s the answer?

Well I have two cards left up my sleeve. One is an actual credit card, the other is a powerful letter.

Option 1: the ‘ol balance transfer deal. This is where I transfer the balance from one card to another in the hope that they have a low interest balance transfer deal. In this case I have a mastercard that does this. The problem is it’s maxed out. So I have to transfer the balance off, to transfer it back on. I will try this and see how it goes. Hopefully that buys me 6-9 months of low interest, enough at least to pay down the balance a bit, before I have to do it all again.

Option 2: FIGHT BACK! this is more difficult, and involves lots of letters to the credit bureau. But the theory goes like this: if your credit score sucks, like mine does, it’s probably because there are a few late payments on there and old accounts you don’t need. By disputing your credit report with the credit agency, you can force them to either 1) prove the late payments occured (which they CAN’T because the lender who reported the late payments isn’t going to bother looking it up) or 2) REMOVE the late payment from your credit report. So IF you actually bother to file a complaint, you can actually get some of the negative shit removed from your credit bureau, and hopefully that will boost your score enough to get APPROVED for that low interest credit card… AH HA! you see… this is actually going somewhere…

I’ll keep you posted…

Jon McG

Everyday Debt Advice

Debt Settlement

Trackback URI | Comments RSS