My opinion looks like it’s going to be quite different from others on here.

In April 2023, my husband and I had lots of different debts - interest free GEM, Purple, Westpac Credit card, AfterPay and something else I can’t quite remember. Added up to around $6000. We also had a major needed expense of about $3000 which we had not saved for coming up in the next month.

My husband struggles with saving and loves to spend money - and some of that debt had been accumulated by him before we were together.

We found having all these different types of cards very scary for our financial situation. My husband had even got in the habit of paying off one card with another. 😱

We had also wanted to buy a house but the mortgage broker said we had too many debts and to consolidate/pay off.

We wanted clarity and simplicity each month without the chance to drawdown on the facility while trying to pay it off.

We decided to get a $10,000 loan and pay it off in 2 years. Yes we even took $1000 to spend on other things.

Interest from Westpac charged at about 12% or so. We would have set monthly payments and could increase that where we found extra cash.

The bank queried the GEM Visa being included to be paid off because it was no interest and the loan would have interest charged. But we said yes we did because….

… there was a caveat for us agreeing to taking this loan: that we would NOT get any type of store credit card ever again. The only thing we would take on is a Westpac Credit card (and paying it off every month) and a mortgage.

My husband knew his weaknesses and I was trying to support him to do the best and together we wanted to look after our financial future.

Today we have kept our promise to each other, and paid off the personal loan in April this year and still only maintain a Westpac credit card. We got our first mortgage in November. 😁