Thinking about stopping payment on all of my credit cards to have enough money to create a savings for my family. I have a few questions Help, please.
I am 34 with a two year-old and a husband. My husband has been out of work for six months and I am the sole breadwinner. I have been at my job for nearly 4 years and I make decent money a 85K or so depending on overtime. I have a lot of debt and I’m terrified of the possibility of my job doing layoffs. It doesn’t seem like it, but there has been a lot of changes up top and it’s just the fear I have. I have about seven credit cards that I am in debt with and I’m considering stopping payments on all of them so that I can get into some kind of hardship plan or just letting them all default and go to creditors to try to strike up a deal my reasoning is that we have zero savings and I I can’t save anything paying all these credit cards. I pay about $1400 a month monthly credit card debt. I have three from Citibank, which are under $600 each. I have two from Chase which are under $2000 each. I have one from Capital One which is under $3000 my Apple credit card is at $5000. My American Express is at less than $200 and my JetBlue is under $1200. I also have a $16,000 personal loan that I I was on a hardship plan that ended and they won’t renew. I was paying 270 a month but now it will jump to 480 a month at the end of this month and I absolutely cannot pay that so that’s definitely going into collections. I also took out against my 401(k) with my husband first lost his job. I took out $7000. If I were to lose my job, I know I’d have to pay that back so I want to at least be prepared somehow someway and I feel like my best route right now is to take the loss of ruining my credit score for a few years and sort of get a fresh start. Has anyone done this before I feel horrible? I am afraid I have so much anxiety. I’ve been paying all of these credit cards for years, i’ve never made a late payment. I have repeatedly pay them off and just got into that again. Now having a daughter has made me significantly more financially responsible and I just really need a fresh start. If you’ve done this before are you able to apply for credit cards with the same banks again? Should I only continue to pay the ones that are with Citibank and Chase so I don’t ruin my relationship with them? I can’t file for bankruptcy because I make too much. I also have Student Loans that are probably going to start charging me soon. Those are about 35K.. ugh 😣