CC Hardship Programs?
Fell down a rabbit hole via social media / reddit / online forums and discovered the concept of financial hardship programs to help pay down credit card debt. Why am I just finding out about this? Am I the only one who never knew this was an option? & if you’ve used a program like this, could you tell me about your experience?
I have 2 maxed out credit cards with high interest rates (21% and 22%-29%), and for at least a year, I’d resigned myself to never making any progress on them. I could barely eke out the minimum monthly payment, and it was like the same amount got tacked on as interest every month. Vicious cycle.
It took about 10 minutes, one phone call, and one online chat to get here:
Card 1: APR reduced from 21% to 9.99% for 6 months with lowered monthly minimum payments.
Card 2: APR reduced to ZERO from 22-29%, 60 month payment plan to completely pay it off at a reduced monthly rate.
I went from feeling completely hopeless about this debt to actually having a plan that I can act on. It was incredibly easy to get set up with these hardship programs, and didn’t require any sort of specific documentation or hours of customer service talk. I did it directly with the 2 credit card companies.
I want everyone to know about this. It really would’ve helped me a lot if I’d found out sooner, but I’m happy to be on a better track now. Thanks to the great folks who admonish the “shame” and share their stories and tips online — it really does make a difference.