How long were you robbing Peter to pay Paul?

[deepin]

Just curious, how long do folks typically fool themselves into thinking they can continue to 'rob peter to pay paul' and stay afloat until they realize they need to file?

[okiebk09]

Lets see well I have had credit cards for 12 years so I have been robbing Peter for 12 years. lol.. Sorry Peter I will pay Paul with cash now.

[GeG_Lost]

With us it was nearly a year, maybe slightly more than a year. My dad was living with us and terminally ill. I kept telling myself that after he was gone I would go back to work and catch up. In October/November reality hit when I couldn't even find temporary holiday work. I put in applications at tons of retail stores for holiday help and never even got a phone call. The cards were getting maxed out, and I had no real hope of finding a job. That is when I realized no one could keep that up for long.

[hopefulbk]

I had been paying off all my cc's every month (over the last 9 years) until 2 years ago. I even had a 850 beacon score about 3-4 years ago... then, a string of bad luck paired with losing 1 income and a surprise medical condition put us in a bad spot. After that, it was downhill from there.

[Flamingo]

Just curious, how long do folks typically fool themselves into thinking they can continue to 'rob peter to pay paul' and stay afloat until they realize they need to file?

That depends on how much denial someone is in and how big of a credit line is available on multiple cards. After several months of the Peter/Paul dance, usually one bank will catch on to what you are doing because the balance keeps going up and minimum payments are usually just being made and purchases made. Reality hits when the credit limit gets raised on one of the cards so future "robbing" costs more. All this does is put one further in debt because while one thinks they are going to be able to pay it all back, it gets way out of hand when the credit limits shrink and the bank maybe reducing the credit limit. Banks watch for the practice cause it's usually a big sign of financial trouble so they take action.

[deepin]

Let me clarify...

My original intent was to better understand (specifically) how long people usually juggle balences on cards/'robbing peter to pay paul' before they realize they just can't do it anymore.

Does this not happen as much as I thought?

Isn't this one of the primary reasons that BKs are filed?

[hopejones]

For me, it was 2 years worth of robbing Peter to pay Paul...then I figured out I had to file.

[Flamingo]

Let me clarify...

My original intent was to better understand (specifically) how long people usually juggle balences on cards/'robbing peter to pay paul' before they realize they just can't do it anymore.

Does this not happen as much as I thought?

Isn't this one of the primary reasons that BKs are filed?

Robbing Peter to pay Paul is not a reason for filing bankruptcy. Something leads to the practice; i.e., living beyond ones means (spending more than what comes in), loss of income, too many credit cards and overspending, having too large of a credit line available which seems like easy cash for a purchase, credit card limits run up and no way to pay the card so use another available card, etc. As I mentioned in a previous posting, most people will rob one card to pay the other for maybe several months until one of the lenders catches on by viewing credit reports. By that time balances are run up since some of the transfers and fees can be large so it all depends on one's financial state at the time and how long they stay in denial. Many people do it prior to bankruptcy thinking it is a way to prevent filing but it just puts one further in debt and if you have to file a Chapter 13, you may end up paying most of it back so it really is not a good practice when you actually sit down and think of what goes on cost wise and percentage wise and fee wise.

[cupcake]

Robbing Peter to pay Paul is not a reason for filing bankruptcy. Something leads to the practice; i.e., living beyond ones means (spending more than what comes in), loss of income, too many credit cards and overspending, having too large of a credit line available which seems like easy cash for a purchase, credit card limits run up and no way to pay the card so use another available card, etc. As I mentioned in a previous posting, most people will rob one card to pay the other for maybe several months until one of the lenders catches on by viewing credit reports. By that time balances are run up since some of the transfers and fees can be large so it all depends on one's financial state at the time and how long they stay in denial. Many people do it prior to bankruptcy thinking it is a way to prevent filing but it just puts one further in debt and if you have to file a Chapter 13, you may end up paying most of it back so it really is not a good practice when you actually sit down and think of what goes on cost wise and percentage wise and fee wise.

For me, it was all of these things that led to the massive amount of debt. My ex and I were living beyond our means and when I took a huge pay cut ($16k/year - huge to us) our spending habits didn't change and things got really bad. We had huge lines of credit available just on CCs (over $150k)
and we had no savings. Pretty much everything got put on cards until we realized it had to stop but by then it was too late. For five years we literally robbed Peter to pay Paul and we only got farther in the hole. Never again. Let me say that one more time: NEVER AGAIN. Credit cards are pure evil.

[Ms.Santos]

I have only been doing it for about a year... but in the past 2 months, it's gotten really bad. My poison is the payday loan. My credit has sucked for years (screwed it up in college) but was finally starting to get better. I didn't want to make my credit worse, so I took out a couple of loans, thinking I could pay them off quickly. One unfortunate situation occured after another, and I couldn't afford to make the payments anymore. I am in such a deep, dark hole it's not even funny. How verrrrry quickly things went downhill for me...

[novayalife]

5 years for me! Who would have thought I could have lasted that long with perfect credit, ridiculous credit limits (40,000 just on American Express) and making those payments every month. The scary part is, I am in my mid twenties and my limits totaled over 100k on unsecured credit cards!

[WillinVT]

I got into the mess I am in back in 2006. I had 2 credit cards at the time; 1 had a limit of $1500 and the other had a limit of $1000. At that time, my wife and I were both working and after the birth of our first daughter, my wife left her job to stay home with our daughter.

I didn't know how we were going to survive on only my income; especially with a $323.00 a month car payment and 2 credit cards that were almost maxed out.

I received one of those pre-approval unsecured personal loans from Capital One for $10,000 and at the time, it seemed like a good idea. My plan was to take the loan for 3 years at a payment of $359 a month (something like that) and pay off my car loan and my credit cards. I thought it would be a good idea to pay off my car because I had 4 years remaining on it.

Well, instead of doing what I planned on doing, I made a few payments on my car; paid off my credit cards and since Christmas was right around the corner, I had enough cash to splurge. I bought a 32" LCD HDTV, (2) 30GB Apple iPods, has about $1000 worth of repairs done on my other vehicle; bought new snow tires on rims for the car I was still paying on and even paid a few grand back on the loan and before I knew it, the $10,000 was gone.

That is when I started using the credit cards again. I knew I should have canceled them at the time, but wanted to save them "just in case".

In April of 2007, I received another offer in the mail for a Credit Card with HSBC with a $10,000 limit and 0% on balance transfers for 1 year. I signed up; was approved and paid off my 2 credit cards for a second time and the rest of the loan with Capital One.

At that point, I should have canceled my first 2 credit cards, but me being the person I was, did not and guess what? I maxed them out in a matter of months and now I was stuck with 3 credit cards that were all maxed out with $12,500 in the hole.

But wait, it get's better. Right before my wife and I moved in September of 2007, Capital One sent me another offer for another Unsecured Personal loan, but this time, it was for $15,000. I thought about this one for a good 2 weeks and had it all written down on paper. If I had taken the loan, my payment would be $558 a month for 3 years and I would be able to pay off all 3 of my credit cards and even have enough left over to pay off my car. That was my plan and I was sticking to it.

Sadly, I did not stick to that plan. I paid $9,000 to HSBC and paid off my other 2 cards and paid another grand to my car company and left the rest in my checking account for "just incase". Christmas was right around the corner and since I needed money to buy things for me, my wife and family that we really didn't need, I ended up blowing the rest on that.

Since July of 2008, I have managed to spend down the $9,000 on my HSBC card and I even managed to get a card through Juniper for $2400 back in October.

All this time, I have managed to keep up on my payments and all of my other bills as well, but I was using the cards for gas, diapers, food, ect... and I was getting no where on paying down the balances.

I was making extra money on a few websites I owned for a good year and that money helped each month, but I was banned from the affiliate company and that money stopped coming in.

Now that I am close to $28,000 in the hole and after a good 6 months of thinking about bankruptcy, I see it as the only way to end this mess.

If I would have canceled the cards like I intended to do, maybe I would not have been in the mess. Plus, I should have learned to throw those stupid offers away when I received them in the mail. I had my name taken off that list for credit companies to stop sending you offers, but it's a little too late for that now. Hopefully, I will have learned my lesson from all of this and have a fresh start when all is said and done.

[mamaluv]

5 years for me! Who would have thought I could have lasted that long with perfect credit, ridiculous credit limits (40,000 just on American Express) and making those payments every month. The scary part is, I am in my mid twenties and my limits totaled over 100k on unsecured credit cards!

I hear ya...by the time I was 25, my credit card limits were almost 150k. One of my Citi cards limit was 52k!! Over the past 5 years I've managed to rack up 110k in cc debt. Oh how I would do things different now lol

[queenfluff]

Robbing peter to pay paul means balance transfers right? I just heard about this saying today - I saw a little video online about it.

For me, just the last year, I never thought it was a good idea before that and I didn't understand how they work and figured I didn't need to do them and I mostly did it to stretch out what cash I had left as long as I could in hopes I would have a job soon. But that didn't happen and soon, there was no space on the cards I was doing transfers to and Chase wouldn't let me do them anymore (all the transfers were from my Citibank card when those a-holes jacked my rates up -my biggest card). Before last year, I only had one card so no where to balance transfer too and I didn't know that when you did a balance transfer that was counted as a payment on the card - I gotta admit I liked that idea. Of course it wasn't getting me anywhere payments wise. I just owed that same amount on a different card. But it was something temporary I was doing until I had more cash - I wasn't wanting it to be a permanent thing.

So, now no more cash left and here I am. "sigh"

[eddiep]

We have been dragging this out for years.