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What do you do if you find yourself in a position where you can’t make your credit card payments? You could ignore the bill but that is a strategy that leads straight to financial ruin. What follows are steps you can take to mitigate against financial disaster.

If you cannot pay your credit card bills your first step is to contact the card issuer immediately. Failure to communicate with your creditors is a sure step toward financial catastrophe. Most customer service representatives will push for at least the minimum payment, generally 5% of the total outstanding amount owed, but never less than $20.00. You may try to convince them that your situation is dire but temporary, in which case you may be able to reduce your payments to between 2% to 2.5% of the outstanding balance. In some cases, especially if you have a history of timely payments over a 6 to 12 month period, the customer service representative may have the authority to allow you to skip 1 or 2 payments with no penalty attached. Be sure to get the name of the person you spoke to and make sure you get the appropriate mailing address because you must follow up the conversation with a letter that restates the arrangement you agreed to on the phone. The form of that letter should be something like the following:

Dear Sir of Madam:On (today’s date) I spoke with (name of CSR) about my credit card bill. We agreed to the following arrangement: (outline the arrangement made).

If I hear nothing to the contrary within 30 days, I will assume that you are in full agreement with my understanding of this arrangement. Read more of this >>

Moses is alleged to have received the 10 commandments on a mountain top, Now a new voice has been added from the Tower of FICO and the ordinary way of doing things has changed.

A successful marriage has always required astute planning, particularly financial. From years as a marriage counselor, it is my experience that the major hurdles are sex and money but not necessarily in that order. . And interestingly enough I required that any participant in the Marriage Symposium I sponsored be married a minimum of five years. This is an arbitrary figure determined by myself I have found that those married over five years have different problems than those married less. After five years the romanticism has flowered and the reality of spending your life with someone sightly different from the one I married has begun to come crashing down.

But these new FICO rules are raising havoc with married couples as well as with partners and live-ins.. For years it has been common practice to include one’s spouse as an authorized signatory on the other spouse’s credit cards.

At first blush, it seemed so romantic – signifying the oneness of our union. Then it became a practical matter. Put the spouse on the gasoline credit card so each could purchase fuel for his/her car at one’s leisure. Read more of this >>