Can New York Consumers Use Reward Points to Pay Down Credit Card Debt?

Unfortunately, many New York consumers build heavy credit card debt in pursuit of reward points. In attempting to earn a free trip or significant cash back, they accidently rack up debt. Here’s an interesting thought, though. Can you turn these coveting points into cash to put toward your balances? The short answer is, yes. You certainly can. Of course, whether or not credit card users in New York should employee this tactic depends on their situations. For example, if you’ve damaged your credit score with exceptionally high credit card balances, using existing points to bring those balances down makes sense. However, if whittling down credit card debt requires New York consumers to build more debt, the payoff isn’t really worth the price.

When Using Reward Points to Pay Down Credit Card Debt Makes Sense for New York Consumers

If New York credit card users have a stockpile of rewards points and heavy debt, converting the points to cash to use toward balances probably makes sense. Of course, most credit card reward points hold more value as air miles than cash. However, unless you’ve been planning your dream vacation for months, grabbing the cash and shrinking the debt is probably the best option.

Not every consumer in New York knows this, but your credit utilization ratio accounts for about 30% of your credit score. Ideally, you should use no more than 30% of your available credit at any given time. If, on the other hand, you utilize more than this, or max out credit cards, your credit score can drop. Sadly, this often happens to New York consumers with high credit card balances even if they pay all of their bills on time.

This is why a lot of New York credit card holders get quick credit score boosts almost immediately after paying down heavy credit card debt. So, if you just have a big chunk of reward points just hanging around, you may as well turn them into a credit card payment and possibly improve your credit score.

When Trying to Earn More Reward Points to Pay Down Credit Card Debt Makes No Sense for New York Consumers

Inspired by this idea, New York consumers may sign up for additional rewards credit cards in order to earn more reward points to put toward debt. Yet, credit experts warn that, most of the time, this is a bad plan. In fact, for many New York credit card users, this strategy comes with three major flaws.

• Many consumers in New York with heavy credit card debt may not qualify for credit cards offering top-tier rewards programs.
• Unless they get the math just right, consumers can easily spend too much and rack up more debt in their attempts at earning reward points to eliminate it.
• Because rewards-heavy credit cards frequently come with higher interest rates, interest charges might negate rewards earnings.

Ultimately, using reward points to pay off credit card debt is a lesser-know strategy that benefits some New York consumers. Namely, credit card users with points already accumulated experience the most success with this plan of action. On the other side, those who seek rewards for the sole purpose of paying down balances typically do more harm than good.

Why New York Consumers Should Protect their Credit Scores by Checking their Credit Reports

When working to pay down credit card balances and improve credit scores, New York consumers should regularly check their credit reports. This is because, unfortunately, there’s a very good chance that your credit reports contain errors of some type. Creditors and the credit bureaus often make mistakes with consumer information, and their mistakes lead to credit report inaccuracies that can damage credit scores.

So, protect your growing credit scores by checking your credit reports at least once every 12 months. Under the Fair and Accurate Credit Transactions Act (FACTA), you can do this for free. Just go to www.annualcreditreport.com to request your free, annual credit reports from TransUnion, Equifax, and Experian all from one website.

Then, while reviewing your credit reports, if you find credit score damaging errors, contact Credit Repair Lawyers of America in New York. Under the Fair Credit Reporting Act (FCRA), you can dispute credit report inaccuracies with the credit bureaus, and have them removed. However, when you call our firm, you don’t have to handle the dispute process on your own. Instead, our talented credit pros will do all of the work for you. Then, an experienced credit attorney will do whatever it takes to get you clean credit reports – for free.

The Free and Legal Way to Get Better Credit in New York

Don’t let errors on your credit reports bring your credit score down. At Credit Repair Lawyers of America, we’ve been cleaning up credit reports for consumers since 2008 for free. How do we do it? All of our fees come from the defendants in settled cases. This is why our clients pay nothing for the work we do.

Let’s start the conversation about what we can do for your credit. Set up your free consultation today by calling Attorney Carl Schwartz at (646) 859-3045 or sending him a message through our contact page.

For more information about Free Credit Repair, please visit https://creditrepairlawyersam.com/credit-repair-free/.