Improving the financial state of our economy is something that Golden Financial Services strives to do on a daily basis. Golden Financial Services is one of the few BBB A+ rated & IAPDA accredited debt consolidation companies in this country.
By providing scholarships to students across the nation and helping them to pursue their college dreams–-catapults our future economic prosperity.This is an essay submitted by a college student who hopes to win this year’s Golden Financial Services scholarship.
To apply for the scholarship, students must provide a unique solution to the following problem.
**“ In the United States there is $15+ billion in delinquent credit card debt (people who are more than 90-days behind on credit card payments) — besides restricting the act of lending what are viable options for solving this problem?”**
ABOUT THE STUDENT: Mona Adaba- Missouri University of Science and Technology.
Mona Adaba- Missouri University of Science and Technology.
Rolla, Missouri.
5/13/2017
“I am called Mona Adaba from Cameroon in the central part of Africa. My first language is French. Coming to America was a blessing for me in so many ways especially as I could get the quality education I have always dreamt of. I am currently a student at Johnson county community college and I will be graduating May 19th, 2017 with my Associate’s degree. I will be starting school at Missouri S&T this fall for a degree in Business and Management systems. When I started college, I was hoping to be an IT major, but with a few courses into the program, I felt confident that I want to have a business degree. I did not completely throw my IT dreams, however. I decided to incorporate both IT and Business. Outside the classroom, I do self-study towards obtaining certifications in database administration. Business has always been my passion and now with the growing IT field, I believe a blend in both will take me places.
Your scholarship will go a long way to help me focus on my career goals since I spend most of my cash on buying textbooks and software for my database training, in that way, I can put in more effort on my school work rather than pick more hours to meet up with the everyday cost of living. Moving to a small town like Rolla has been very challenging for me getting a full-time job. I work very few hours and with a minimum wage. It is very hard to be able to get things done like I did in the past.
I have had many challenges, being in a foreign country and English is not my first language, however, I have been able to use these challenges as stepping stones and put even more effort into my school work. And today, I have a GPA of 3.72 and I am hoping to do even better. Thank you so much for this opportunity. Scholarships like this give me the zeal to work harder with each passing day, I will not only make myself proud, I will make you and my society proud as well. Thank you so much.
Yours Sincerely
Mona Adaba”
HERE WE GO…
Paying off debt and struggling to get credit card relief can be stressful.
I never really understood credit card language especially coming from a foreign country where credit cards are almost non-existent. So, long as there was money to spend, I was good to go. Over the years, my monthly payments seemed to be going up higher each month. It became more and more stressful even meeting up with minimum payments. I started having late payments and my credit score started going down. I decided to embark on credit card study. I did not know any such thing existed as utilization rates. The higher your utilization rates than the higher your interest. I have tried to keep my utilization rates down to 30% which is something everyone should be doing. I was contented with doing minimum payments but later came to realize that this also hurts my credit and at the end of the day, I wasn’t doing myself a favor because the balance keeps piling up. Many people are not aware of the importance of checking their credit reports. I spoke with my husband shortly before we got married, and he had no idea as to what that entailed or why it was necessary. I believe if everyone signed up to check their reports regularly, and see how these credit card debts are affecting their credit score, they will be inclined to paying most of their debts. I use credit karma to check my score and this step in understanding my finances has been a stepping stone in my life.
I am at that stage of my life where the thought of buying my own house comes to my mind every day. Many people aren’t aware of the impact that debts can have on them when it comes to investments like this. I recently learned about consolidating my debt including all my credit cards into one debt. I haven’t tried this yet but this stands as another way to solve the increasing debt problem in the US. Sometimes, we have several credit cards with different interest rates. Some interest rates were extremely high. If we can get a financial institution that will have you consolidate all your debts as one, with one lower interest rate, I don’t see why not. This I believe will be another method I will consider getting me out of debt quick.
One method which has really worked for me is the debt snowball method. The debt snowball method is a debt reduction strategy where you pay off debts in order of smallest to largest, gaining momentum as each balance is paid off. When the smallest debt is paid in full, you roll the money you were paying on that debt into the next smallest balance. It looks something like this:
Step 1: List your debts from smallest to largest.
Step 2: Make minimum payments on all your debts except the smallest.
Step 3: Pay as much as possible on your smallest debt.
Step 4: Repeat until each debt is paid in full.
This helps because if you start paying the largest debt first, you won ’t see it leave for a while. You ’ll see numbers going down on a page, but pretty soon you ’ll lose steam and stop paying extra. And you ’ll still have all your debts hanging around. But when you ditch the small debt first, you see progress. That one debt is out of your life forever. Soon the second debt will follow, then the next. When you see the plan working, you stick to it. And when you stick to it, you will succeed in becoming debt-free. I have been doing this for close to a year now, and I am happy to say it has really been working for me.
Moreover, I have credit cards that offer rewards. Before my whole journey of understanding credit cards, I will always use my rewards for more purchase. Usually adding up more balance to my credit card. I found out that I could reverse this rewards into the payment of my credit card debt. This has been working for me a great deal.
In my continuous attempt to understand how to reduce my credit card debts, I have talked with people and done research and I came to realize there are many things out there that are not known to us. Sometimes, one may wish to pay off their debts but the hardship that we may face hinders us from meeting up with this duty. My neighbor lost her job, got divorced and life was hard on her. Through her, I found out you could opt into a financial hardship program. She did that for one of her credit cards that reduced the interest rate and monthly payment. It eventually showed the account closed and a 0-credit limit during this time on her credit report, which I wasn’t aware it could do. This, of course, may not be the best option for the credit card companies, but it helps the individual to meet up with hardships that are plaguing us today. I believe setting up a budget should be the first thing that should come to everyone’s planning phase. Having a budget is the key to financial success. My spend versus save ratio should leave me with a substantial saving at the end of each month. This way, we wouldn’t find ourselves in this situation of debt because we will be getting just what we need and not buy what we want just because we have credit cards.
