I have read and heard that credit card companies are upping everyone's interest rate.  I always thought it would never happen to me because I am one of those that never carries a balance.  Well, it did!!  It went up 2 %.  Of course, when I called I got "Mandy" from India. She told me my only course of action is to close the account.  She said they sent me something back in June, I don't remeber getting anything. I swear they go by a script and keep repeating the same thing over and over again.  I asked to talk to her supervisor and all that got me was back on hold and then some other rep in India. Not only did they up my rate, they have not given me my points for using the card.  This is the only reason I use the card.  I charge everything on it and then cash in the points to get free gift cards - usually gas cards for when we travel.  I know that just last year, I was able to call and get the rate lower just for asking.  At that time, a rep from Ohio told me to call again in a few months to get it lower some more. 

Moral of this story, read every piece of mail your credit card company sends.

 This happened to us also. We keep one card with a zero balance. We got a bill for $60! I couldn't belive it, at first I thought that some one had stolen our card. But when I called I was told that $60 was the new yearly fee. That they had mailed out a letter two months ago. Well I didn't get any letter. I read every peice of mail that comes to my house. Even junk mail. We ended up canceling it and they took off the charge.

cyn

Remember when new legislation was approved to stop credit cards from doing this stuff. The good news is that it was passed. The bad news is that it doesn't go into effect for a few more months. (I'm thinking Feb 2010 but that may be wrong). So in the mean time, this is their last ditch effort to squeeze out as money as they can.

I can't wait to get my remaining balances paid off and never have to deal with this again.  I haven't gotten a 'yearly fee' notice yet, but I did get notice from Chase that my minimum payment would go up from 2% to 5%.  That won't be a problem for me, as I was paying nearly that anyway in order to try to get out from under them, but that would be enough to push some people (who were barely scraping by) over the edge.  I guess they did this because they couldn't raise my interest rate, since it's locked in at 4.9 for the life of the balance;  I watch my online statement like a hawk and pay the day the bill comes out, before it even shows up in my inbox.  I've heard too many horror stories of them changing due dates at random in order to "trick" people into being late so they can raise the interest rates.

Okay, now I'm officially freaked out.  I have $16,000.00 in cc debt and fear these "tricks of the trade" are going to nail me as well.  I've been paying twice as much as my minimum but it just doesn't go down very fast.  I started working a 2nd job at the first of the year however when DS made the high school baseball team I went on hiatus to make sure I was available for him because there was alot of out of town games.  I'm now convinced its time to call her and see if she still needs extra help.  I'd put it off because DH works 10:00 p.m. - 7:00 a.m. and I work 8:00 - 5:00 p.m. so going to an extra job from 6:00 - 9:00 p.m. really limited the amount of time we spent together. 

We've pretty much sold all we could but I'm going to look around and see what else might bring in some cash so I can send that to the cc as well.

Everyone hang in there.

I wouldn't freak out, Lee.  Keep paying any extra that you can towards the cc.  You will get the them paid off and I'm sure you have fixed the problem that caused all the debt. If you have stopped acquiring debt, then those balances will go down.  

However, value your time with family, those are the most precious!  

 The REAL moral of the story:

Don't use credit-->even if you pay it off monthly or recieve "gifts" for using credit.  It's not worth it. 

Cash is king.  

 

 

Lee:

I've been paying twice as much as my minimum but it just doesn't go down very fast.

Are you sending all of the extra payments towards your smallest debt?

Lee:

I've been paying twice as much as my minimum but it just doesn't go down very fast.

Are you sending all of the extra payments towards your smallest debt?

About paying off cc debt - we owe about $14,000 (and I cannot tell you for what), and we FINALLY admitted that our lives concerning our credit were unmanageable, lol. Stopped using the cards and I wrote out a schedule to pay them off (2 cards) and at best it will be TWO years for us to get them gone.  From that I learned that I do need to see reality, and accept it as truth, but I also then need to just focus on the monthly payments I make and NOT keep looking at the total right now...yes, it's going down but not so's you'd notice it, lol. And this works for me. peace.