Finding Relief from Credit Card Debt
This is how it usually happens. One day you wake up
to the realization that credit card debt is overwhelming your financial
situation. It seems that every last dollar you make goes to the monthly
minimum payments with little left over for life's needs. Getting relief
from the burden of out of control credit card balances is something
everyone who is struggling financially wants to do but many people are
unsure of where to start.
The most obvious starting point is to quit using the nasty things. Every
time you swipe one through the card reader you just add to a growing
problem that is compounded because of the interest that is calculated
each month. For every step forward you seem to fall to two steps back
and the stress of meeting those payments each months becomes harder and
harder. So perform a little plastic surgery, cut the things up, and stop
the financial bleeding.
The next step is to figure out exactly how much you owe and to whom.
Pull out a piece of paper, a pencil, and your latest credit card
statements and write down in columns for each card the balance owed, the
interest rate and the amount of interest paid each month. Once you have
a clear picture of the balances owed you can prioritize your credit card
debt and start working a plan with debt freedom being the goal.
When it comes to making a game plan to pay down your credit card debt
there are two trains of thought on the best way to do this. Some people
advocate choosing the card with the highest interest rate and send any
extra money you have to it each month while paying the minimum on all
your other debts. When that one is paid off then you roll that payment
into the next one and so on and so forth until all the card balances are
paid off.
The second way to approach paying down your debt is to list your
balances from lowest to highest and attack the one with the lowest
balance first. This may not make sense from a mathematical perspective
but it can give you a huge motivational boost because chances are you
can pay that one of rather quickly. Using the same strategies as in the
paragraph above roll that payment into the next lowest balance and
continue on down the list. This method gives you a certain amount of
psychological satisfaction because those smallest balances go away
quickly and by the time you get into the meat of your debt your
motivation is steamrolling you through those balances.
Whichever approach you take to finding relief from credit card debt once
you successfully pay off all your balances you will find a new financial
freedom that gives you many more options with your life. And once those
cards are paid off cancel the accounts so you are never tempted to
repeat your mistakes of the past. | 
