I have a quick PF question and need a bit of help on how to handle this.
I have a student loan for about $6k that is separate from my Sallie Mae loans. This particular loan is accumulating interest like crazy because I'm currently only paying $25/month towards it. I get that sick, pit-in-my-stomach feeling because I think it was originally about $5k. I'm not sure what to do with it. Here is what I've come up with for options:
- Bump it up on the list in my Debt Snowball. Downfalls: it's going to keep piling on ridiculous interest, and it's going to take a while to pay off. I can probably PIF most of my credit cards this year if I focus on only them. And then I could focus on this student loan.
- Our 0% credit card is in DH's name alone (he has excellent credit), and the 0% is expiring soon. We are hoping to balance transfer to a new 0%. Would it be feasible to add this to the current 0% card as long as we have another 0% transfer to go to? Or would that $6k really ding his credit? Technically, I pay the 0% payment now as part of my monthly bills since it's a bunch of my junk along with a bunch of consolidated home improvement costs. It would not max out the card.
- Any other suggestions?
I am aware that my credit is his credit and vice-versa; however, most of my debt is in my name alone prior to us getting married, so I *think* that separates it to a certain degree (or am I way off?). We really keep most of our finances separate and depend on his credit score if we need to, but really, I'm hoping we don't need to use any credit at all once I get out of the mess I'm in with my credit cards and student loans.
Help, suggestions, opinions are all welcome :)
Well...I have an opinion about this. My hubs and I took the Dave Ramsey FPU class at our church. WE had some debt including a credit card that was really my "responsibility." Or at least that's what we kept on thinking. Two years later it was lower but still not paid off! So in Janaury we sat down together and just decided it was "ours" and paid it off. I understand where you are coming from with trying to just do it on your own. I REALLY wanted to do this by myself too...BUT, we are a team and as husband and wife we've gotta work together. Once we realized that we paid EVERYTHING off...including some other debt (in total we had around $6000) with our income tax. We are now officially debt FREE! WHOOT! It feels good to both of us to have accomplised this and we are celebrating together. Now we are trying to work on our emergency fund.
Just my thoughts....