Is it a good idea to consolidate my debt?

Question

i'm 26 y/o and i have horrible credit. I want to have good credit before i get married and start having children. Can someone help?

Answer 1

You need to take a good look at your finances. You might want to talk to your loan officer at the bank. It might be a good idea to consolidate (cheaper interest rate for sure). But that would be useless unless you put some order in your house: put the credit cards through the shredder for a while, live within your means, possibly start saving a little from your paycheck each month and thus see a better future

Answer 2

If the interest rates are high, might be a good idea to consolidate your debt to a lower interest personal loan but with a bad credit history, it might be hard to get a personal loan.  That being the case, you'd just have to pay off all your credit before you get married by paying the highest bearing interest rate loan/creditcard first and the the next and stop chalking up more debt.

Answer 3

If you have outstanding bad debts the first step to repairing your credit is to bring them current. You can request a copy of your credit report for free from each of the 3 credit bureaus. www.annualcreditreport.com makes the process of requesting your credit report easy without requiring you to sign up for any trial offers in the hopes you'll neglect to cancel within the trial period. Beyond that it's largely a matter of paying on your existing debts in a timely fashion. A debt consolidation is only potentially helpful in cases where you're paying astronomical interest rates and can reduce them substantially. However, you could do yourself a disservice by continuing to use the credit cards (for example) after you've seemingly paid off the debt (when you've actually merely moved it - you still owe it, just to someone else), only to end up even deeper in debt.