Overwhelmed by Credit Card Debt? Stop paying on the cards – for now.

A decision not to pay your debt obligations is a serious one. Joe SuperSaver is not proposing that you just stop paying on your credit cards because the interest is too high or you don’t agree with the all the fees they charge. But sometimes there’s just not enough money to go around to cover everything. If you have to become delinquent on a mortgage, car, or utility payment to pay the credit cards, you need to set your priorities and deal with core expenses that will have an effect on your ability to stay in your home, or get to work, or keep the house heated.

Stopping those card payments can be very painful. Your interest rates will shoot up, you’ll get late fees, perhaps overlimit fees, and see your credit score plummet as the late payments get reported to the credit bureaus month after month. If you go 180 days without making a payment, the creditor will write off the debt as a bad loan and report it as a charge-off to the credit bureaus. After that, you can look forward to countless phone calls from unpleasant debt collectors and be exposed to the possibility of a lawsuit.

If your cash flow improves, you can still salvage the debt problem as long as you haven’t reached the charge-off point. A debt managment plan can bring those sky-high payments back down to a more manageable level, allowing you to retire that debt in about 5 years time. If you haven’t recovered by the charge-off time, you might want to consider debt settlement as a better alternative than trying to pay off the full amount you owe.

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