Reducing Debt

Many families today struggle with a burden of credit card debt. For whatever reason they use their credit cards to the point where they feel as if they are unable to reduce the amount they owe, even though they are making more than the minimum payment. Sound familiar? Have you gone through a financial management presentation where you can learn the technique of snowballing payments to pay off your debt?

The first step might bethe hardest. Stop using credit cards so you can actually pay them off instead of accumulating more debt. Make a budget and stuck with it, even though it means making sacrifices in the short term, just be dedicated to making this process successful. Step two is all about the payments. If you only make the minimum payment you'll never pay off the balance owed, so try to send as much as possible to each card every month. The technique I learned is a little counter-intuitive. It was to list all of your debt by the amount owed, send the minimum payment to all of them, except the one with the lowest balance. That is the one you send as much as you can to. For example, instead of sending $100 to each of three credit cards, I would send the minimum to two, say $35 each, and the rest, in this case, $270, to the one with the lowest balance.

This will reduce the principal amount faster and you will see actual progress. Once that debt is paid off, take the entire amount you were paying, and put that towards the next balance. In this case, you pay for the next card which becomes $305 and that will help reduce the balance there. Continue this technique until you have paid your debt. A nice side effect is that when all of your debt is paid off, you can take the money you were paying and put it into a savings account. You have already proven you can survive without it, so the money you were paying to your debt can be set aside for a rainy day instead.