“I want to pay off credit card debt” – does this sound familiar? This may have been your New Year’s resolution or something that you discuss with your wife or significant other every night before you go to bed. The fact is that millions of Americans are in some form of credit card debt. For years credit card companies have made it easy for you to fall into debt by offering low introductory rates and easy credit.
Well just because you are in credit card debt doesn’t mean that you have to remain there. There is a way out and it can be very simple if you discipline yourself to monitor your spending habits. Like many other bad habits, the first thing is to admit that you have a debt problem. From here you can make a plan to pay off and eventually eliminate your credit card debt.
One strategy is to eliminate unnecessary spending by evaluating your current spending habits. Do you really need 500+ television channels to surf or can you get by with just 50? Is that gym membership really necessary when you only go once every 3 months? Once you free up some money you can move onto the next step which is paying off your credit card debt.
One of my favorite methods is Dave Ramsey’s “Snowball effect”. The strategy behind his method is to pay off your debt starting from the highest APR card to the lowest APR card meanwhile making the minimum payment on your other cards. Every time a card becomes free and clear you continue to pay the amount you were paying on the previous card on your next card. Once the first two become clear you apply the money that you were paying on the first two to the third. Repeat this process until your debt is eliminated.