Today's Lesson: You Don't Know if You Don't Ask
I'm In Debt
- Posted:
7/19/2008
Currently in my household's finance world, we're in the middle of trying to decide what to do with our house. In previous years, tough economic times caused my husband to refnance the house and take out all of the equity in order to consolidate other bills. We don't think we could sell it for what we owe with the economy the way it is; and it's difficult to get it refinanced yet again - but we're getting to the point where we wonder if we would be better of with a different home or even going back to renting.
So I discovered Zillow.com - a website where you can enter details of your home and it will give you a Zestimate (Zillow's term for an estimate/guess) of your home's value; and you can even set a "make me move" price. This is the amount of money that if you were offered it today you'd probably say "YES!" and move out of your house. My husband thinks I'm crazy and no one will offer the price I set for our "make me move" price - but I say - you don't know if you don't ask.
I also have one credit card from a couple years ago. It was obtained in order to help rebuild a faultering credit score that occurred when a school loan went "bad" during the months I was on bedrest with a difficult pregnancy. The card had an annual fee, but I wanted something I could put small purchases on and pay it off regularly, in order to get something reporting to the credit bureaus about my payment status (paying on time). At the time, I didn't have any other accounts that could help me re-build my credit, and couldn't get approved for a better credit card (at least, I didn't thing so). Now though, things are different. My credit score is on the mend and has gone up several points already, I have a new car with a car loan that is also reporting my payments to the credit bureau and helping me increase my score; and I don't feel I should be paying an annual fee on my credit card.
I figured I'd call and ask to have it removed - you don't know if you don't ask! At first, the customer service representative immediately said no, that the annual fee was part of the card's terms and agreement and that it couldn't be removed. I thanked him for his time, and told him I would be transferring the balance to a new card with lower interest and no annual fee, and closing the account as I saw no point in paying $59 a year to use their card when the other credit card company was going to let me use theirs without an annual fee.
He put me on hold and came back to say that since I've been an on-time payer for the year that I have had the credit card (I pay weekly instead of monthly, and 4x the minimum payment each month. It would pay it off in full except that I use the card to have a monthly website subscription charged to it each month), he could waive the annual fee for me. He also refunded the annual fee that had posted to my account last month and offered some sort of identity theft protection (which I declined- why should I pay $9.95 a month for identity theft protection when the card says I'm not liable for unauthorized or fradulent use anyway?!)
So the moral of the story is- you don't know if you don't ask. If you have a mortgage you want to refinance, try it. If you want to sell your home but don't think you can't get the asking price- list it for sale and see what happens. If you have credit cards with high interest or annual fees- ask to have the interest lowered and/or the fee removed. You may be surprised at what you can do if you just ask.
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