<prompt> Human: Throwaway account. As the title states, I recently used a personal loan to consolidate debt. I acquired this debt through a lot of travelling last year. Is the debt fun? No. Do I have regrets from using credit cards to travel and see the world? Nope. But the debt became overwhelming when I realized I spent so much time being stressed out about it. Thats why I chose to consolidate it into a single loan. Here was my credit card situation before signing the loan. I have a mortgage but no other installment loans. My credit score was right at 700 when I applied for the personal loan.Credit Card 1: 6500 - 19.25Credit Card 2: 2700 - 15.25Credit Card 3: 2800 - 0 Until Dec 2015 Balance TransferIn late February, I went to my local credit union Ive been banking with them for almost a decade now and applied for a personal loan at 9.5 for 36 months for 9200 to pay off Credit Card 1 2. Since Credit Card 3 is at 0 interest, I didnt consolidate that into a loan with interest for obvious reason. I just made my first payment of 295 on the personal loan and Credit Card 3 is down to 2200 Im trying to pay it off before it earns interest in Dec 2015. Ill be more aggressive with the personal loan as soon as credit card 3 is paid off completely.Overall, Im glad I made this decision. It has been so much less stressful and much easier to manage my budget knowing my payment is going to be that exact amount every month. The most important thing I did was establish a 2000 emergency savings before signing the loan and cutting up all of my credit cards as well to avoid any temptations to buy things I cant afford...like more travel expensesYOU CANNOT BORROW AWAY YOUR DEBT. My debt is still there and it will take time to pay-off, BUT I am happier every day now knowing that I HAVE A PLAN and its easy to budget for it.Consolidation will never work if you do not cut up your credit cards and have an emergency savings account to cover your ass.Anyways, just wanted to share.  <response>: Very good plan - I did the same thing about 5 years ago to get things under control. 