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I recently received a large amount of money, well large in my eyes, around 5000 dollars.

I have the following cards:

  • $10619 citi card ($234.35/month)
  • $2500 Best Buy Card - deferred interest promotion ending in December, APR 24%
  • A few small cards with no interest and $10-30 monthly payments.

How should I approach this? I am thinking that paying off bestbuy is probably a good idea, at least before December and possibly taking paying off as much of citi as possible? As a side note,

Is it possible to find out how the interest is calculated for a credit card without calling the company. For example, my current balance on citi is 10,696.17 and my min payment is 234.35. The current interest rate is 13.99 percent. I want to know if I cut the citi card in half for example, how much would the min payment go down?

mpenrow
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Xaisoft
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10 Answers10

17

Pay the Best Buy first. Most of these "Do not pay until..." deals require you to retire the entire debt by the deadline, or they will charge you deferred interest for the entire period. So, if this was a six-month deal, they're going to hit you for an extra $300 in December.

Chris Cudmore
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There are some calculators that you can use to figure out the best approach, such as this one by CNN. But in general the rule of thumb tends to be the following:

  1. Highest interest rate, regardless of debt.
  2. Largest amount if rates are the same.
  3. Low interest or "good" debt.

For the purposes of the Best Buy card, I would put it up there at number one so you don't get hit with the deferred interest. No point in giving them more money if you can pay them before the end of the cycle.

Next, I would look at what you have for emergency savings, if you have an account established and that is at a comfortable number than putting the money towards the Citi card might be good, otherwise, split part of the money between savings and the credit cards. If an emergency pops up you don't want to dig a deeper hole because you can't pay for something with cash.

anonymous
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I want to know if I cut the citi card in half for example, how much would the min payment go down?

If you goal is to become debt-free, the minimum payment shouldn't matter. Even if the minimum payment goes down, continue your current payment amount (or more, if you can afford it) until the balance is paid off. Paying the minimum will just keep you in debt longer.

Bruce Alderman
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8

Pay the highest rate debt first, it's as simple as that. When that debt is paid (the 24% card in this case) pay off the next one. As far as having an emergency fund is concerned, I consider it a second priority. If one owes 24% money, that $2000 emergency fund is costing $480/yr. Ouch. Avoid the behaviors that got you into debt in the first place, and pay the cards off as fast as you can. When you have no balance, start to save, first into the emergency account, then toward retirement.

JoeTaxpayer
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5

My advice:

  • Put $1,000 aside in a savings account. Use an online account like ING so it is more onerous to get at it.
  • Pay off the BestBuy card.
  • Pay off the smallest balances first.

IMO, all things being somewhat equal, you should always try to retire debts as quickly as possible in most cases, so start with the small cases.

The method of calculating credit card interest is written on the statement. Usually it is "average daily balance method".

Don't sweat the details. Just pay the things off.

duffbeer703
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4

Basically, your CC is (if normal) compounded monthly, based on a yearly APR.

To calculate the amount of interest you'd pay on each of these accounts in a year, pull up a spreadsheet like Office Excel. Put in your current balance, then multiply it by the annual interest rate divided by 12, and add that quantity to the balance. Subtract any payment you make, and the result is your new balance. You can project this out for several months to get a good estimate of what you'll pay; in accounting or finance terms, what you're creating is an "amortization table". So, with a $10,000 balance, at 13.99% interest and making payments of $200/mo, the amortization table for one year's payments might look like:

Balance    Interest    Payment   New Bal
$10,000.00  $116.58 -$200.00    $9,916.58
$9,916.58   $115.61 -$200.00    $9,832.19
$9,832.19   $114.63 -$200.00    $9,746.82
$9,746.82   $113.63 -$200.00    $9,660.45
$9,660.45   $112.62 -$200.00    $9,573.08
$9,573.08   $111.61 -$200.00    $9,484.68
$9,484.68   $110.58 -$200.00    $9,395.26
$9,395.26   $109.53 -$200.00    $9,304.79
$9,304.79   $108.48 -$200.00    $9,213.27
$9,213.27   $107.41 -$200.00    $9,120.68
$9,120.68   $106.33 -$200.00    $9,027.01
$9,027.01   $105.24 -$200.00    $8,932.25

As you can see, $200 isn't paying down this card very quickly. In one year, you will have paid $2,400, of which $1,332.25 went straight into the bank's pockets in interest charges, reducing your balance by only $1,067.75. Up the payments to $300/mo, and in 1 year you will have paid $3,600, and only been charged $1,252.24 in interest, so you'll have reduced your balance by $2,347.76 to only $7,652.24, which further reduces interest charges down the line. You can track the differences in the Excel sheet and play "what-ifs" very easily to see the ramifications of spending your $5,000 in various ways.

Understand that although, for instance, 13.99% may be your base interest rate, if the account has become delinquent, or you made any cash advances or balance transfers, higher or lower interest rates may be charged on a portion of the balance or the entire balance, depending on what's going on with your account; a balance transfer may get 0% interest for a year, then 19.99% interest after that if not paid off. Cash advances are ALWAYS charged at exorbitantly high rates, up to 40% APR.

Most credit card bills will include what may be called an "effective APR", which is a weighted average APR of all the various sub-balances of your account and the interest rates they currently have. Understand that your payment first pays off interest accrued during the past cycle, then pays down the principal on the highest-interest portion of the balance first, so if you have made a balance transfer to another card and are using that card for purchases, the only way to avoid interest on the transfer at the post-incentive rates is to pay off the ENTIRE balance in a year.

The minimum payment on a credit card USED to be just the amount of accrued interest or sometimes even less; if you paid only the minimum payment, the balance would never decrease (and may increase). In the wake of the 2008 credit crisis, most banks now enforce a higher minimum payment such that you would pay off the balance in between 3 and 5 years by making only minimum payments. This isn't strictly required AFAIK, but because banks ARE required by the CARD Act to disclose the payoff period at the minimum payment (which would be "never" under most previous policies), the higher minimum payments give cardholders hope that as long as they make the minimum payments and don't charge any more to the card, they will get back to zero.

KeithS
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You've already received good advice here, pay off the highest rate card first, in this case the Best Buy card. I completely agree.

To answer your question about the minimum payment, I can't guarantee that this is how Citi does it on your particular card, but several online calculators seem to use the following formula.

Minimum Payment = Fees + (APR / 12) x Balance + 1% x Balance.

I plugged in your numbers and got really close to the minimum payment you mentioned. I ran calculations for balances of 8,500 and 6,500 and got payments of $184 and $141.

You can use this calculator to plug in some numbers for yourself. I found the formula on this page along with a reference stating that Citi uses the formula.

Edited to Add: As Bruce Alderman mentioned in his answer, it's probably not a good idea to just pay the minimum. That calculator I linked to shows the difference between paying the minimum and even a small amount ($50 or so) more than the minimum every month. Something like the difference between 3 and 10 years.

Sean W.
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Dave Ramsey would tell you to pay the smallest debt off first, regardless of interest rate, to build momentum for your debt snowball. Doing so also gives you some "wins" sooner than later in the goal of becoming debt free.

2

First, make sure you have some money in a savings account that you can use instead of credit cards for making future purchases that go beyond what you have in your checking account. $1000 is a good amount to start with, so just take that out of the $5000. Then pay off the Best Buy card.

You shouldn't be worried about the minimum payment. Determine what you can pay per month (say, $400), and take the minimum payments out of that. Then choose one card to get the rest of your $400, plus the remaining $1500 of your $5000.

This should be the highest-interest card, mathematically, but it may or may not be your best choice; it depends on your personality. Some people get a psychological lift out of seeing debts disappear, and it gives them more motivation to keep going. Those people may be better served by paying off the smallest debts first, to get them out of the way. I'm an INTP, so it bothers me more to think that I'll be paying a little more in interest over the long term by taking that route.

Adam Jaskiewicz
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I agree with the Dave Ramsey method as well.

If you don't have $1k in the bank already, do that. Total up the smaller debts and the best buy card. if they are $4k all together, then pay them off. Don't get caught up in keeping the smaller one around because they are at zero percent. If they exceed $4k, then payoff the interest bomb best buy card, then pay off the smaller ones, starting with the smaller balance. That is the only tweak I will make here. Dropping any amount into the Citi balance is pointless because it only reduces the amount, not the total number of hands reaching into your bank account.

Waddler
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