Debts

Debts

Statistically Speaking...

• The average of all household credit card debt is $9,312
• Assuming your debts total this much, and assuming you only pay the required monthly minimum (4% of your outstanding balance) each month, and assuming the average interest rate of your debts is 14%, it would take 13 years to pay it off. This means you'll be paying $3,778.81 in interest (on top of what you owe) so you pay back $13,090.81.
• The total balance of U.S. credit card debts is $665 billion
• According to the American Bankers Association, 4.81% of all accounts were past due by 30 days or more.

According to these statistics, most Americans need help to reduce debts. Good thing there are a lot of ways to do it. If you have a lot of credit card debt and your credit is good, you could try transferring your balance to a credit card with a 0% interest rate introductory period. But for this to be effective, you need to be able to pay the entire balance off during the introductory period. Otherwise, it would be smart to transfer to another 0% interest card. Just make sure there are no balance transfer fees and no annual fee.

If this method of getting rid of debts won't work for you, turn to a debt management program for help. There's so much variety in these programs that there's truly something for everyone:

• Are you a homeowner? You can eliminate credit card debts through a debt consolidation mortgage.
• Do you have collateral? You can get a debt consolidation loan.
• Have a lot of money saved, just not enough to pay everything off in full? Debt settlement might be for you.
• Do you have $10,000 or more in student loan debts? Student loan debt consolidation might be for you.
• None of the above? You can still consolidate debts in the form of a basic debt consolidation program--even bad debts!

The beauty of most of these programs is the fact that they all function by getting you reductions in interest rates, and most of them can have you saying, "I Used to Be In Debt!" in as little as five years.