What Actually Happens If You Stop Paying Your Credit Card? (The Real Math)

Josh, Eric, and Marcus owe the same amount on the same kind of credit card. Then money gets tight for all three of them. Josh loses his job, and the card is the first bill he lets go. He doesn't call the bank. He doesn't open the letters. He just stops. Eric never misses a single payment. Every month,

right on time, he pays the minimum and gets on with his life. Marcus falls behind, too. But before his second payment is due, he picks up the phone and asks his bank a question most people never think to ask. So what actually happens to Josh? Do the police show up? Can they take his car or his paycheck?

Can a man go to jail over a credit card? And does the debt ever just disappear? We're going to follow all three of them month by month and put a real dollar figure on every choice they make. Along the way, you'll see why a debt the bank has written off is not gone. How a

payment of just $20 can hand a collector a brand new chance to sue you. And why some people end up with a tax bill on money they never received. But here's the thing. The man who never missed a payment is not nearly as far ahead of Josh as you would expect. And one of

these three walks away far better off than the other two for a reason that has nothing to do with paying more. Start with the number all three of them owe. $6,610. That is not a number picked to make the story dramatic. According to TransUnion, it is the average credit card debt per borrower in America right now. Millions

of people are carrying almost exactly this card. The interest rate is ordinary, too. Cards that carry a balance are charging about 22% a year on average according to the Federal Reserve on $6,610. That works out to about $123 of interest every single month before a cent of the actual debt has been paid. Now, the