Credit Card Advice

021

Looking for a bit of advice if I may...

I'm finally on the right road to sorting my debts but I want to make sure I make good choices from now on, hence me asking this in advance of making a decision. I'm pretty sure I've ticked all the boxes on the full list of 'what not to do' of financial management on my way to where I am know, but the long and short of it is as follows:

I have 4 credit cards with various amounts owed totalling £6500, none of which have had payments made on them for between 5/9 months (and one even longer). Quite small fry really compared to some, but for a family on one fairly low income it was a fairly daunting amount to owe. The breakdowns are something like £2500, £1700, £1300 & £1000

Rightly or wrongly, I stopped making payments so I could rob Peter to pay Paul and managed to clear a couple of store card debts and my council tax arrears. With those now gone, serious cutbacks in budgets, a promotion at work and the OH landing a new job too (meaning she now pays some of the household bills), I have a little over £400 at the end of the month to work on clearing this debt.

Now to the question bit; I have two options in my mind, which one do you think I should take, or is there a better option you can suggest?

A) Continue to not make the monthly payments and build up a reserve of cash with which to offer the card companies a lower one-off payment as full & final settlements one by one

Make the monthly minimum payments and pay off chunks of the debt with what is left (which would work out at about £250ish a month)

thanks in advance

Toomuchdebt

I would go for option b-better for your credit rating and you won't have anyone hassling you while you're trying to save up enough to offer them all settlements at once.