Pay off credit card or car loan?

[shibabigk]

We are working on getting out of debt and will have paid off our 16.9% CC probably by March, maybe April. After that we are moving on to the next traget. Question is, out of a car loan and a creditcard, which should we pay off first?

Both at 9.9%
On the Credit Card we owe $3500 (limit is $8700)
on the car we owe $4300 (23 months left)

Which one should we focus on first? Originally I thought 'pay of the CC of course', but then, well the pament on the car is $200/month. If we no longer have to make that payment we would of course apply it towards the credit card but say something comes up than we have that money to use for whatever we need. While we pay more than the minimum each month, we can pay a different amount if we need to, while the car loan has to be paid each month no matter what. Hope that makes sense. I do think that actually 'owning' the car would feel good but I am willing to skip the feel-good for the financially wiser decison.
I also read that we should get all the CC debt to less than 30% of the limit for a better Fico score and then work on them by intrest. While we are paying of th higher intrest card first, in case it woul be better to pay of the car first, should we first pay down the card to less than 30%?
What do you guys think?

[disneysteve]

Absolutely pay off the CC first. The car loan has a fixed interest rate. The CC has a variable rate. The CC company can decide to raise your rate at any time for any reason. It might be 9.9% today but tomorrow you could get a notice that it is going up to 14.9 or 19.9 or 29.9%. Get rid of that as soon as you can and don't ever use a CC again to make a purchase if you can't afford to pay the bill in full when it comes.

[buildmybudget]

I don't have much to add to DS other than make sure you are carefully watching your budget to make sure you are squeezing out every dollar you can towards that monthly CC payment. Like DS said you could very quickly be faced with a rate that would make it much more difficult to pay off. So you have to make sure you are putting as much towards it while the rate is still manageable. Good luck!

[EconoMutt]

Another viewpoint.
I think paying the credit card is good advice but you may want to ask yourself "what would I rather have if I lost my job".
I would rather have my car paid for. If you cannot make your credit card payments (unsecured debt), they can only trash your credit score temporarily and call you bad names.
If you miss a car payment, your car will be gone. So will your chances of landing another job unless you live on a bus route.
Paying any debt down is good advice though.

[shibabigk]

Thanks guys. While the card is probably extremely unlikely to go up (Star Card), it makes sense to pay it off first. However, I think if DHs job would not be so stable with the military, I'd probably get the car taken care off first, just in case we'd end up both without a job and no means to continue our payments.

[EconoMutt]

Thanks guys. While the card is probably extremely unlikely to go up (Star Card), it makes sense to pay it off first. However, I think if DHs job would not be so stable with the military, I'd probably get the car taken care off first, just in case we'd end up both without a job and no means to continue our payments.

Job stability is a major factor