If you find that you seem to have a whole bunch of different credit cards, all with outstanding balances that are only escalating due to the interest rates, you may want to consider credit card debt consolidation options. Often cardholders don’t realize that the minimum payment is not going to decrease your principle debt and will, over time, only increase as the interest rates go up. I know that this is a huge mistake that I made, thinking that making minimum payments would eventually pay off the card, but too late I realized it just meant I would forever be paying interest to the credit card company.

Another mistake that I learned only by making it was to get into the cycle of using payday loans to pay off my minimum balances. Payday loans are great for emergency situations and those immediate needs, but they aren’t designed to be a line of credit. What I did discover is that some credit cards have lower interest rates than others, which results in paying less over time. I was able to transfer the smaller balances on high interest rate cards to the lower rate cards and make just one monthly payment that was over the amount I was paying to the various companies. Even this small amount really made a difference, so consolidation of credit cards may be just what you need to get started in paying off those outstanding balances.

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