A New Job in the New Year - Advice Please

symesd

Hello everyone, I am so pleased that after 2 years of searching I have finally got a full time job offer and I start in the new year. A fresh start, finally I can start to make a plan and clear my debts.

BUT I want some advice...

I have managed to get the interest frozen on some of my accounts with a lower pro-rata payment, others have not been so helpful. Should I target the ones which have not frozen the interest and stick to the agreed payments with the ones who have frozen the interest.

OR

Start to pay off more on the ones with the frozen interest and get rid of them asap. Then concentrate on the unhelpful ones after I've paid off the interest free stuff. (See signature for details of Debts)

I want to pay off my debts as quickly as possible... but do not know which would be the best way?

Any advice would be helpful.

Thanks

chevalier

this is where the snowball calulator at www.whatsthecost.com will come in handy. You can input your debts into it with apr's and repayments, and it will suggest what you should pay off first. It will also give you a debt free date.

You can run different scenarios on it, like
1) what do I pay out if I stay the same as now
2) what happens if I pay the interest bearing ones at a higher rate
3) what happens if I pay the interest frozen one at a highter rate than now.

A fourth option might be to continue paying as you are now, and save the extra you are going to have up, so that in a few months time, you can start offering creditors full and final settlements (ie where you offer them a lump sum which is x% of the total debt), which some of them might go for.

I know emotionally you might want to pay off the debts of those companies who have helped you by freezing the interest, but financially the companies who have not frozen the interest are costing you more
chev

symesd

chevalier - Thank you for the link to the snowball calculator, I began to breath again after calculating. It says I can be Debt free in 70 months, fantastic, that is based on what I can afford now, so when my new job starts in January, when I will have more money, I will be able to be debt free much sooner.

I was unable to save my details on the site and have written to the site owner to see if he can design a calculator which can be downloaded and manipulated so you can try out difference scenario's.

Once again thank you. :T