The Credit Card Debt Elimination ProcedureThe best credit card debt elimination procedure is not as hard as it may seem but it is not completely painless. Many things in life are not really hard but we don't pursue them if they deprive us of something that we want. The secret to getting out of debt is no secret at all, but just personal discipline. Once you are living on a monthly budget where you spend less than you make and have your $1,000 emergency fund in place it is time to accelerate your debt payoff schedule. Just a reminder here. At this point you should have your monthly budget honed to where you are spending only for the necessary items for your family. As long as you are still in debt you should not be budgeting money for items that you do not need! Credit Card Debt Elimination Procedure - Step One List your debts in order of the total amount owed from smallest to largest. Credit Card Debt Elimination Procedure - Step Two If you really have a desire to get out of debt, the next step is to sell anything that is around the house that is not used or needed. Take this money and put it toward the smallest debt. Hopefully you can eliminate one of them with this money. Credit Card Debt Elimination Procedure - Step Three Pay the minimum monthly payment on each of your debts except the smallest one. Pay as much as you possibly can on this smallest debt and get it paid off as soon as you can . Scrape up everything that you can to accomplish this. Credit Card Debt Elimination Procedure - Step Four Once the smallest debt is paid off, add the amount that you were paying on the smallest debt to the minimum on the second smallest debt. You will now be accelerating the payoff of what was originally the second smallest debt. Credit Card Debt Elimination Procedure - Step Five Keep doing this with each consecutive debt until they are all paid off. Then you can jump up and down! You may be wondering why you should start paying on the debt with the smallest amount owed rather than the debt with the highest interest rate. The answer is that you want a victory, and as quick as possible. Nothing spurs us on like achieving a goal. Example Let's say you have four debts on four different credit cards of $800, $1,200, $2,000 and $2,800. The respective minimum monthly payments on these debts are $55, $75, $100 and $110. In step one you would add as much to the $55 payment as you can. Let's say you can pay an additional $40 and pay $95 each month. After this debt is paid off you add the $95 that you were paying on the first debt to the second for a total payment of $170 and keep doing this until all four debts are paid off. You will notice that as you start to pay of the credit cards they will lower the minimum payments. Do not pay any attention to this, just keep accelerating the payoff. As you can see, paying off debts is not difficult. It just requires some sacrifice, it can be done.
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