DH and I have too many credit cards, and they all had high balances. Our interest rates on some were pretty outrageous, too. All of them in his name, and he either brought them into the marriage or applied for them without telling me about most of them (I knew about our Dell card, since it was to buy my laptop for school). Our total number of cards right now is 9. 
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We are working towards paying them down, but it's hard with so many and all of the finance charges. We decided that this year I would take out the maximum allowed on my student loans (we knew I'd be taking out enough extra to pay for the midwife, but that was it). Doing this has allowed us to pay off 4 credit cards in full (including the one with the 30% APR). The interest rate on these loans is less than half of the lowest interest rate on our cc's. We're combining this with snowballing our payments.
By doing this, and adding in our estimated tax return (estimating low, btw, since it's likely we'll have another child on this return and I only worked 3 weeks this year vs. 8 months of last year), we can have our cc's paid in full by March. And our business loan and motorcycle paid in full by Jan. of 2009. The business loan (actually a personal loan used to cover old, unexpected business expenses) isn't scheduled to be paid off until Sept. of 2009, and the motorcycle isn't scheduled to be paid off until 2012! We'll also be able to build our savings at the same time, and work towards paying off at least my unsubsidized loans (this is the only year we're taking out extra) before I'm out of school.
I know borrowing money to pay off borrowed money isn't always the smartest option, but we're saving so much in finance charges this way, and our able to pay off our credit card debt sooner. Which means we can get rid of the blasted things. It's also gotten DH to see the big picture rather than just getting overwhelmed by all the small monthly payments that never seemed to make a dent in the balances. He's now more open to other money saving options, and is getting just as excited as I am about paying off our debt! We've also gone the entire month without overdrawing our checking account- and I that's the first time this has happened in a very long time!
: :We are working towards paying them down, but it's hard with so many and all of the finance charges. We decided that this year I would take out the maximum allowed on my student loans (we knew I'd be taking out enough extra to pay for the midwife, but that was it). Doing this has allowed us to pay off 4 credit cards in full (including the one with the 30% APR). The interest rate on these loans is less than half of the lowest interest rate on our cc's. We're combining this with snowballing our payments.
By doing this, and adding in our estimated tax return (estimating low, btw, since it's likely we'll have another child on this return and I only worked 3 weeks this year vs. 8 months of last year), we can have our cc's paid in full by March. And our business loan and motorcycle paid in full by Jan. of 2009. The business loan (actually a personal loan used to cover old, unexpected business expenses) isn't scheduled to be paid off until Sept. of 2009, and the motorcycle isn't scheduled to be paid off until 2012! We'll also be able to build our savings at the same time, and work towards paying off at least my unsubsidized loans (this is the only year we're taking out extra) before I'm out of school.
I know borrowing money to pay off borrowed money isn't always the smartest option, but we're saving so much in finance charges this way, and our able to pay off our credit card debt sooner. Which means we can get rid of the blasted things. It's also gotten DH to see the big picture rather than just getting overwhelmed by all the small monthly payments that never seemed to make a dent in the balances. He's now more open to other money saving options, and is getting just as excited as I am about paying off our debt! We've also gone the entire month without overdrawing our checking account- and I that's the first time this has happened in a very long time!
