We recently made a decision to pay off the majority of our debt by tapping into our savings. Our goal in doing this is to pay off as much as we can so that we can live on only my husband's income for a good while allowing me to stay home with the baby for as long as possible.
We have two fairly large credit cards to pay off and I understand that we can make a settlement with them. Particularly one of them since most of the charges have been either medication or medical expenses. Does anyone have experience with this?
We want to be diligent in this so that our burdens will be far lighter in the near future. We will be making these decisions this week and trying to get everything lined up, but I feel a bit frazzled using so much of our savings. Everyone keeps reminding me that we will not miss the money nearly as much as we will miss the family time and peace of mind we will experience in the days ahead. I firmly beleive that, but it is a big step in faith to use that security blanket. A dear friend reminded me that at least we had that available to us.
We live a very modest lifestyle so I am praying that this is all of God's will for our family!
Please share your experiences and ideas, I would love to hear about them!
I don't have any advice but I agree with your friend. What a blessing you have something to pay it with. That's huge! Good luck with everything :)
ReplyDeleteI definitely encourage you to pay off the cards if you can. I've never settled but I hear that calling them directly and just offering a percentage usually works. After all depending on how long you've carried a balance, they may have made money on you already. Interests rates are so low on investments and so high on cards that ultimately not paying off the cards is costing you huge dollars in interest. I know the fear of loosing your nest egg though. We need a new car and I'm completely freaked about spending our savings even though that's what it's there for. Praying for you!
ReplyDeleteI don't have direct advice, but have read that others have good luck with the Crown Financial Money Map for making decisions like this. I think that they have a daily call-in show on evangelical radio stations - maybe it's worth calling in and seeing what they have to say? Good luck and I think it's wonderful that you are working on this so that you can give LB the gift of lots of mommytime.
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