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If you delayed your Christmas shopping until the days just before the holiday, then you probably escaped the early January credit card bills that tend to show up around the first of the year. A thirty-day reprieve is nice, but one thing may now be apparent: your Christmas credit card bills have come due in February.

Christmas Buys Are Now Due 

Those sales leading up to Christmas meant that you saved a lot of money on your purchases as stores slashed prices in a bid to move inventory. For shoppers paying cash, huge savings were realized, perhaps the best deals for the entire year.

Pay Off Your Cards ASAP

If you charged your purchases, those big savings will disappear if you do not pay off your credit card balances immediately. Saving 20 or 30 percent on electronics, clothing, and personal goods is a treat, but if you stretch out your payments over several months, then the accumulated interest will wipe out those savings.

The tendency for some consumers when they receive their credit card bills post-holiday is to go into shock — too much spending and not enough money to pay everything off. The first thing to do is get past your shock and determine what you owe. Next, come up with a plan to pay off the balances, even if you don’t have the means to pay it off all at once. Spreading repayment over several months can help you wipe out holiday debt and cutting other expenses can help you do that faster.

Coming Up With A Plan

Besides cutting other expenses, you can gain control of your finances now by instituting the following measures:

Stop spending — Don’t add to your credit card balances. Instead, only pay cash for new purchases. Nip the problem in the bud now and you’ll gain control of your debt quickly.

Save money — Christmas club plans have just about vanished at banks across the US. However, you can authorize your bank to automatically withdraw $5, $10 or $20 weekly from your checking account and deposit those funds in a special savings account. Come next October, those monies will be available to you and you won’t need to use your credit card for next Christmas’ purchases.

Tap your home’s equity — Not recommended by many financial advisors, but still an option open to you is to take equity out of your home to pay off your debt. You can get a low rate loan and pay those monies back over a longer period of time, but there is a catch — if you default on the loan, you could risk losing your home.

Christmas debt can easily overwhelm Christmas memories by adding stress to your life months after the tree has been taken down. Take command of your finances now and come up with a plan that works best for you.  Come next Christmas, you can reap the rewards of your diligence and enjoy the holiday without worrying how you will pay for everything later on.

Christmas is over and a new year is about to begin. Like so many people, you’re probably thinking about making some important resolutions such as losing a few pounds, reading more books, perhaps taking control of your personal debt. Christmas shopping, medical bills, and credit card debt can add up putting more financial pressure on you then ever before. You’ve tried to cut back, but there is only so much meat on that bone!

Debt Consolidation Loans: Are They Right For You?

One way that consumers are getting a handle on their debt is through debt consolidation loans. By combining outstanding balances to just one monthly payment, hundreds of dollars in interest charges can be avoided and monthly payments lowered. Although a traditional debt management loan is one option, a home equity loan or home equity line of credit could be the better option for home owning consumers. Let’s examine how using your home’s equity can offer to you an appealing debt solution.

HEL or HELOC

A Home Equity Loan (HEL) or Home Equity Line of Credit (HELOC) are types of loans where your house is used as collateral for your debt. With a HEL your loan amount, interest rate, and loan term are pre-set, while a HELOC allows you to draw on your equity credit line as needed during a specified “draw period”. Like a HEL, a HELOC must be paid back within a certain amount of time, but the consumer has the option of borrowing all the way up to the loan limit or nothing at all. With a HELOC you only pay interest if money is borrowed, but with a HEL your interest charges begin to accrue when you borrow the money.

Some points to keep in mind when considering tapping your home’s equity includes:

• The loan is lien on your home. If you fail to pay back your HEL or HELOC, then the lender has the right to go after your home. Usually, a home equity loan is the second loan on the home, after the mortgage loan, but sometimes it is the first loan. In either case, the lender reserves the right to foreclose on your home if you default on payments.

• Your interest rate is established based on your credit history, amount borrowed, repayment ability, current market rates and loan term. People with a better credit history are eligible for a lower rate, but your interest rate may fluctuate if you take out a variable rate loan.

• There may be fees involved with the closing of your loan. These can include a title search charge, origination fee, attorney costs, appraisal, and more. Your lender is required to disclose what your fees will be, if any. Some lenders will absorb all of your fees while others will give you the option to add these fees to your loan (costing your more money in the long run).

• You may be able to deduct a portion of your interest rate payments from your taxes. Please check with a lone advisor to see if you qualify.

Is a home equity loan the right debt management solution for you? That is something for you to carefully consider. Shop around for a loan, compare rates, and understand the terms of the loan before moving forward. Your home is on the line when it comes to a home equity loan, but the lower interest rates and manageable monthly payments are two attributes worth noting.

SayLending Has Been Completely Revamped

More than four years after it was first launched, the SayLending consumer financing center has been overhauled. New tools and calculators have been added, representing a complete revamping of this popular and well established consumer-friendly website.

SayLending offers to visitors all of the tools they need to borrow money wisely. Before committing to a loan of any type, you should completely understand what your options are and choose the best option available. Our tools can help you with that.

Four popular areas resourced by visitors to SayLending include the following loan categories:

Mortgage Loans

Home Refinance

Home Equity

College Financing

In addition, information on debt consolidation, credit cards, and personal loans is available to you.

Empowering You To Make Wise Borrowing Decisions

Please use these loan calculators to estimate your financing position. SayLending keeps every calculator simple so that you can make smart borrowing decisions for all of your lending needs. That way, you are empowered with interest rate content and calculations to select the right financing choice for you and your family.

We hope that you find SayLending’s free internet tools to be personally enriching.