If you are in America, and these are federal student loans, you may be in luck. The gov. has a program to rehabilitate defaulted loans that benefits both parties. Once you work out an agreement with them, they will take your loan out of default status and delete the entry from your credit report. You will once again be eligible for federal aid, and once certain conditions are met, you can even defer payments. You must agree to payment arrangements, and you must make all payments on time, every time. Contact the federal student aid agency right away to make arrangements.

Personally, I think it is a bad idea to consolidate your student loans with a credit card. You’ll likely get a much lower interest rate on the student loans than you ever will if you try to take out a loan from someone else to pay off the student loans.

For the student loans, however, you can and probably should consolidate them. Go to the Federal Student Aid website (link below). There is information there on how to consolidate the loans. You’ll have to work with them to get the loans current but they are very helpful and will likely even give you a lower interest rate than you currently have. Trust me on this. You’ll get a much better deal from them on student loans than you will from any bank or other lendor. If they see that you are making an honest effort to get the loans out of default, they’ll work with you. But every month you wait, you’re just getting more and more dings on your credit score. Student loans are reported just like any other debt. There is an 800 number on there somewhere and I found that I was able to work out a much better deal by calling them and talking to a human than I was by trying to do the whole thing on line.

As for the credit card, start paying as much as you can towards it and get it paid off as soon as possible.

Just pay them off – don’t go deeper into debt.