Yep. And now it's your house on the line.
Back when I was a kid (...about a zillion years ago. I had a dinosaur instead of a dog...) parents used to teach their kids about financial responsibility. First you take care of a place to live... Then food... Then savings... Then charity... A ways down the line comes a car... And waaaaaay down the line comes all that fun stuff. Doesn't anybody learn that lesson anymore?
It's a trade off. Obviously, not running your cards up to $30,000 is the best thing to do. But-if it has already happened you have a decision.
You owe $108,000 on your house. You have $32,000 in credit cards, at an average interest rate of 14.5% with monthly minimum payments of $800. Your house appraises for $157,000. You could refinance, take cash and pay them off, but for simplicity let's say they have the option to do an equity loan-second mortgage. The equity loan is 15 years at 7.4%. Your payment is $295 a month. You increase your cash flow by $500. And your annual interest is lower. Technically, if you kept paying the credit cards at $800 you'd pay them off faster than 15 years-BUT-that doesn't account for additional fees, increasing rates, and the fact that most people who only pay the minimum do so because they just don't have enough money to pay more. Which means that as their balances decrease the payments go down which takes their payoff time way out to more than 40 years in many cases. For the person struggling, the $500 extra cash flow is beneficial. Doing this is better than the alternatives in many cases. Yes, it's now the house on the line, but for many people the monthly savings outweighs the risk.
But-since you've used your equity, you can't do it again when your cards are run back up in two years. The lesson? STOP USING THE CREDIT CARDS SO DAMN MUCH!!!!