Deciding Which Bills to Pay First Lunch & Learn - Lesson 5 Presented by Nancy Porter

Transcription

1 Deciding Which Bills to Pay First Lunch & Learn - Lesson 5 Presented by Nancy Porter Welcome again. This week we are going to talk about deciding which bills to pay first. I m glad Deborah gave you a little bit of humor to start out because it can get to be a little depressing to think about the strategy that I ve read; some people have their bills, they throw them up in the air, the ones that land on the table they pay, the ones that fall on the floor they wait until another month. Let s hope that we can avoid that strategy for you all. I want to return us back to that very first session when we talked about this equation that your income has to equal your expenses plus your credit payments plus your savings. So this week, I really want to focus on those credit payments, and this may carry over a little bit into next week, which is called Keeping a Roof over Your Head, but it s really sort of all related. These are some of the resources that you have on this particular topic so you have the Deciding Which Bills to Pay First handout. Essentially, this unit of the Taking Charge in Challenging Times was written as a paper and pencil way to help you devise a credit repayment system so you have this handout and you can do it completely by using the papers that are in the handout. Essentially though, when people call me and want to have some personal financial counseling and I really don t do that much anymore, just because I don t have the time as the only person here on campus doing it. The question that I ask people is if they have enough income to make the minimum monthly payments on all of their bills? That s really the deciding factor. If you have enough income to make the minimum monthly payments, either the Deciding Which Bills to Pay First handout, the paper and pencil version, or PowerPay, which I m going to show you in a minute, will help you sort of try to get out of debt faster and save yourself some money. If the answer to that question is no, if you do not have enough income to make even the minimum monthly payments, then I really just advise people to contact either the Consumer Credit Counseling Service, and here is the information for the nearest one in Greenville. It s under the name of Compass of Carolina where several counseling kinds of groups are housed together, but Consumer Credit Counseling Services are part of that group. If you want to look at some other options, you can go to the National Foundation for Credit Counseling website at You put in your zip code and they ll help you locate one in your particular area, but usually it comes up as Compass of Carolina. If you don t have the minimum monthly income to make those payments, there s really not a lot that education can do for you, and unfortunately, people don t come for help until they are in that crisis situation, and so that s the deciding point for me, if you don t have that minimum monthly amount. And then three other resources I want to mention today are that you received another Advantage Calculator like we received the very first time we talked about your latte factor. This one is called Credit Card Smarts, and on side one, you just slide your little slide up or down to what 1

2 your current amount of debt is. So I m just going to let go to $7,000, because that s the average amount, that s actually little less than the average indebtedness of most American families, and it tells you then that you ll pay a total of $13,509 for your debt, including $6,509 in interest charges. If you just make the minimum monthly payments, it will take you 18 years to repay that debt. Pretty startling factors! And then if you turn over to side two, again with that same $7,000 first find your debt; then it tells you if you make that minimum monthly payment of 3% of the balance. It used to be that credit card companies really only required 2% of what you owed as your minimum monthly payment. A lot of them did recently raise it to 3%, and there is discussion of raising it to 5%. That may throw some people into that pot of people who may not be able to make the minimum monthly payments when they increase it, but this will help you. If you increase those minimum monthly payments that you make to 3% of the balance, it will tell you what your payment amount would be, how many years in debt, the interest you pay and that would be the same on the front for the 3% of the balance. Four percent of the balance, your payment would go up to $280 a month, up $70. Your years in debt would only be 12, though you re going to save yourself 6 years of indebtedness and you ll save yourself over $2,500 in interest. And if you made 6% of the balance in your payment, your payment would be $420, but you d only be in debt 8 years, so you be less than half the time indebtedness and you would save yourself over $4,000. So that s really just a quick and dirty little calculator to help you get an idea of how you could pay off your debt in a shorter amount of time, but really what I want to spend the most time on today is talking about a wonderful program that was created by the Extension Service in the state of Utah, Utah State University, and is called PowerPay. The last web address there is the address to get a copy of your free credit report. You can get one credit report from each of the three major reporting agencies without ever having been denied credit, you can get one free report each year and by going to this website now you have to be careful to use the right website because there s one is called Free Credit Report where they try to sell you the service. So it s annualcreditreport.com. A neat little trick I will share with you because identity theft is such a problem in this country just getting a copy of your credit report once a year and checking to see if you ve had any instances of someone accessing your credit without your knowledge, it would be better to get one more frequently. So, what I do is I go to annualcreditreport.com, let s say in January, and I order a copy of my credit report from Equifax, and then four months later, I order a copy of my free credit report from TransUnion, and four months later, I get it from the third one from Experian. So then by the time four months later, I m ready for my next free credit report from Equifax and it s a cycle. So every four months you can get a copy of a free credit report. If you ve been denied credit, then you can get a copy of your credit report at that time. But with not ever having been denied credit, you can get your free annual credit report every four months. This is the Advantage Calculator and this is PowerPay. When you go to powerpay.org or the website that I had on that slide is where you go through the extension portal, but you can go directly to powerpay.org and get to this portal, and then, of course, you re going to choose South Carolina. And then you have to register, so I just went through the process and registered myself 2

3 and I d suggest you write down your name and your password because it will now keep track of the creditors that you have entered into there so you don t have to reenter them. At one time, you had to reenter them every time you went in there, but it will keep track of those, so it creates a profile for you and you can keep up with your debts in this way. And when once you get in, then these are the options of what all you have available in PowerPay. You have PowerPay; you have Spending Plan, which we re going to talk a little bit more about next week. PowerSave is the newest feature to PowerPay that helps you look at how much money that you can save. It has a few calculators, and then it has some additional educational information. So there s a lot of information available in PowerPay to help you. PowerPay really sort of answers that question, How soon can I be out of debt? and eliminating your debt by making power payments. When you get in there, you can just start entering all on your creditors and as I started with a Visa card in entered it in. The red X means you can go in and edit it. So maybe you ve made a payment, you owe a smaller balance so that you can just click on that X, and then edit that information. These little icons here will give you additional information, amortization charts, and calendars and all of that. Then you just have to save your creditor information, and then you can add your next one. This is really a very good process, and whether you do it in the paper and pencil version or whether you do it in an online program like PowerPay, that s where the most awareness is created by gathering all of your bills together and writing down every one that you owe, how much you owe them, and what that annual percentage rate is. That can be an eye opening experience because many times we re in denial about the total indebtedness that we have. Then it explains to you exactly what is power payment over here. As soon as you ve paid off one of the debts on your list, and you get to prioritize the order that you want to pay them off, then you take the amount of that monthly payment and add it to the second debt on your prioritized list. And when that debt is paid off, then you take the monthly amount of the first debt and the second debt and you add it to the third debt. And so it s like a snowball; it really gathers momentum as you go through this process. Every time you enter in a debt here, it tells you your results. For example, with just this one creditor entered in here, it tells you that the total that you will pay is $4,888, even though you only owe $3,500. The interest is $1,388 and it will take you 3 years and 11 months paying it off in January You could stop there or you can add all of your debts. So I just picked out some debts. Let s say I had a furniture loan for $1,500; my monthly payment is $50 at 24% interest. Let s say the South Carolina Credit Union; maybe that s a vehicle loan for $7,000 paying $350 a month at 5.95% interest. And maybe you borrowed money from your brother; $2,000, you re making $100 a month payment, but he s not charging you any interest. He s really sort of a good brother. So then it will tell you that all of your total payments, then the results down here without making power payments is that you will pay $16,592. That s over $2,500 in interest, and it will take you about 3 years and 11 months, because that s the longest one that s the one that s going to take that Visa card that long to be paid off. 3

4 And so after you ve entered in all of your creditors, then you just click over here on payment calendar, and it will show you what this looks like. So the calendar I did it on a different PowerPoint slide, but you can just scroll down and get to the calendar at the bottom of that. If you do this drop down menu right here, I put in highest interest first. I should have shown you a slide of all of them it s highest interest first, shortest term first, in the order that you enter the debts or, I think there are four all together, we ll look at them. Then you ve got them in and you just push that calculate button right there. This is for showing you that on the Visa card without payment, power payment, you ll make 22 payments and it has that total that it showed you on that slide that s with power payment. I m sorry. If you make the power payments in the order of paying the highest interest first they switched the order here -- this is the one without power payments, this is the one with power payments. You can play with these and see what fits into your schedule the best, but with power payments, you ll pay it off in one year and 10 months ending in December That s sounds a whole lot better than January 2013 and your total interest will only be $1,400. You really can show yourself how much you re going to save. You re saving yourself about $ I strolled down and did a screen capture. So this really shows you exactly what you re doing. By paying the highest interest rate off first -- this is the one that s paid off first (I have to look at my little cheat sheet because I can t read sideways). So you re going to take that last payment is $40.56, so you re going to take the rest of that $150 payment and add it to the second debt over here. You aren t going to be able to see it from your seat. I m sorry, you ll just have to play with it; but then the next month it starts by adding the whole $150 payment to the $105 payment you are making on the Visa card up to $255 a month. And when that s paid off, when you ve paid off your brother over here at $100, then you re adding that $100 to those two and adding it to the Visa card, and then that will be paid off, and then you will be adding all four of them and paying off the Credit Union indebtedness. So it s really a neat program. It shows you exactly where the payments are and how much you are going to pay, and when they will be paid off. This one I just chose lowest balance first and I think that s the one I forgot to give you. And then it just shows you then the difference and your benefits of the reduction that you have by paying the lowest balance first. Now the $1,500 was my lowest balance right? Which one did I have for that one? Who did I owe $1,500 to? Ashley Furniture; okay so that s going to pay that one off. And again, if you scroll down to the detailed calendar it is going to show you all of that as well. This one, by paying the shortest term first calculate that number there and it ll give you all the same kind of information and then scroll down to the detailed calendar. You just sort of have to play with your debts and see how that goes. You can put them in the order that you entered. Maybe your brother s giving you to some real problems every time you see him. He says, Oh, is that a new outfit? How come you didn t pay me more money back? You can put it in so that you pay him off first and get him off your back. However that it works for you, you can enter that in, and it will tell you how much you will save by doing it that way and you can just play and see if you want to save the most money or do you want to get your brother off you back. 4

5 There are some calculators in the PowerPay program. So these are the calculators the housing expense calculator. We ll talk a little bit more about this when we talk about keeping a roof over your head next month because it s not just your PITI (Principal, Interest, Taxes and Insurance) that are really housing costs. All of that maintenance that just happens. Something breaks or you get a hole in your roof and you ve got to make those repairs. We usually estimate it takes about 3% of the value of your home each year to keep it well-maintained. So that s something your sort of have to set aside. Loan qualifier calculator. You ll see that in some of the PowerPoint slides that, up at the top, it will ask if you want to calculate and that helps you show when you will qualify for a home loan based on the percentage of indebtedness that you have. A mortgage comparison calculator. Many of your mortgage companies will send you information that says if you want to pay on a biweekly basis, send us $600 and we ll let you do that. Most of the time, you can do that without paying the $600 because in your monthly statement, it has a place where you can add additional principal. You don t have to pay them $600. If you pay them $600 then you get on that rigid schedule where every two weeks, you must make a payment. This way it allows you to decide how much faster you can pay off that mortgage by adding another payment each month. Transportation expenses calculator. Again more into budgeting. Additional payment calculator. Let s say you re getting back an income tax refund and you want to apply that your debts, you can go in there and add that at any time by using one of the tabs at the top, and it will show you how much making that additional payment can reduce your amount of time and savings. An emergency savings calculator is a recommended emergency savings amount. I whipped through those pretty fast didn t I? I am way ahead of the game. In the Deciding Which Bills to Pay First, there is a letter to your sample creditors. If you decide that you want to try to do this for yourself, so again, if you have the minimum amount of income each month to make those minimum payments, then you can try to negotiate with your creditors and get a repayment plan, re-created for yourself. As I told you the first week, sometimes if you just call your credit card company and say I m getting a teaser rate from this other company, would you lower my interest rates. Did anyone try that since we talked about that the first week? Was anybody successful? Okay, did you get them to lower the annual percentage rate? Great, see it works. (Someone spoke, but couldn t hear.) Calling the phone company and ask if there s some way to reduce. They ll look at your phone usage and decide if there is a plan that can reduce your monthly amount for your expenses for your telephone, but also with credit cards many people have success of calling the 800 number on the back of the card and asking if they will reduce their interest rate so you might try and see. The letter, sample letter, to creditors is a letter that you can write. You might say my employer, Clemson University, is making you take five days off without pay. This is really putting a strain 5

6 on repaying my debt. Would you negotiate with me to take a smaller minimum monthly payment? Could I have a month where I just pay interest? There are all kinds of options that you might ask them to make for you. In my experience, most creditors haven t really wanted to work directly with consumers to renegotiate and we re hearing this is true with even mortgage foreclosures as well. If you have to be two months behind before they ll even hardly talk to you and people who foresee this coming and want to be proactive, it s really hard for them to do any negotiating with mortgage people. So you might try it. I really think that going someplace like Consumer Credit Counseling; they have a much longer history of negotiating with creditors. Sometimes creditors will drop the interest altogether and just allow you to make payments on your principal, so there are lots of ways that they can work in your benefit to help reduce your indebtedness. And worksheet #5 just helps you make a list and gather all the information. You might want to use that worksheet before you get in the PowerPay so that you can enter all of your creditors into that system. When you re negotiating with your creditors, you might really want to think about your credit score and how that s impacted. That is such a complicated scoring mechanism and most of those The Fair Isaac s Company that does the credit scoring really doesn t want to share with you how they calculate that. So it s really hard to know, but closing credit cards that you ve held for a long time can really hurt your credit score. So you really have to know how decisions that you make -- so can having too many inquiries into your credit history maybe you re shopping for a car and they ve adjusted some of those. You almost need to have someone who really knows that system, and I don t know that system all that well to help you decide, but there are magazine articles that help you decide how to get better credit scores so you could try some of them. If you decide that you want to cancel a credit card and it s not going to impact your credit score and you really want to do that, you really need to put that in writing. I have cut up my credit cards, put it with the letter, and then asked them to remove it from my credit history altogether. You really need to put all of that in writing. If you call them on the phone, it may not necessarily happen. Not being late with any of your payments is essential to having a good credit score and your credit score is so very, very important. Even if you re not buying a new car and getting a loan or not buying a house and getting a mortgage, but your auto insurance often times they pull your credit score to see if you re a good risk. And you can pay higher automobile insurance premiums because of having a low credit score; getting a job even; sometimes if you don t have a fiscal responsibility with that job, they ll pull your credit history, just sort of get an idea of the type of person that you are. That s something we ve tried to do with Clemson students is to get them to have a better idea that their credit score is almost as important as their GPR to helping them get a good job. So it s really important that every decision that you make in the credit realm doesn t impact your credit score negatively, especially if you re going to be making a big purchase I really advocate that you get a copy of your credit history right before you going to apply for a mortgage or for a loan. I think it s something like 25% of them have errors. Sometimes it s something as small as an initial is incorrect. Sometimes they get family s credit scores mixed up; and I m seeing this more and more that many parents are using their children s social security 6

7 numbers to get credit in their child s name, and they re ruining their children s credit history before they are even 18 and can legally enter into a contract. So you need to get a copy of your credit history and check for errors. It s interesting how they track you down. I was in Washington in the year 2000, and they reimbursed my expenses and they reimbursed me too much for something, and then I moved back to Clemson. They tried to locate me at the address that I was at in Washington and they couldn t find me. Years before that I had cosigned a credit card with my son and so they started mailing letters to his address as his address is co-mingled in with places, even though I never lived there, on my credit score so some things like that aren t really going to be very negative to your credit score, but you want to get all of that cleaned up as much as possible. Sometimes when you go to apply for a mortgage, they will give you credit score and they will highlight those things that they think are correctable. If you have enough time, you can get those corrected. You do as a consumer have another option and that s to write a 100 word summary that you ask to have included with your credit history each and every time it is mailed out to a potential creditor. I ve heard both ways that that s looked at negatively, if you really explain the details. To me, it s better to explain what really happened than to have them really wondering why you have this thing in your credit report, but that s an option that you have as a consumer. And then I don t really want to give in too much into divorces, but divorces can really hurt your credit history. All of those joint accounts that you might have been on with a former spouse, if you don t get them put into your name only, you are responsible for that debt. You entered into a contract with them, even if you got divorced, even if the divorce decree says that you aren t responsible for that debt, they will hold you responsible. So, think wisely before you ever enter into a marriage partnership, and think wisely as you re getting out of it to protect yourself as much as possible. Do we have any questions about Deciding Which Bills to Pay First? We hope that next week you will come back to Keeping a Roof Overhead. The hard part for me is because there is so much turmoil going on in the mortgage industry, it s hard to even advise people what s the best road if you re facing a foreclosure, so we probably will not spend a great deal of time talking about foreclosures, but it s a whole new world if you re faced with that between short sales and foreclosures and selling your house at auction and all of that, so I hope that you be back next week. 7