Any time is a good time to think about paying off debt. Be it the holidays, the new year, or your birthday – now is a fantastic time to free yourself of the confines of high interest credit card debt. It’s pretty likely that we’ve all been leaning a bit on those open lines of credit to make ends meet during these chokingly bad economic times, but racking up those interest charges will only hurt you in the long run. Here are some suggestions of what to do and what not to do in order to pay off some of those accounts.
The first thing you should do is make a plan. Figure out how many credit cards you actually have, and how much you owe on each. You’d be surprised at how many people don’t keep track of which cards they have, what the interest rate is on each, and how much they owe on each one. Once you do this, you can identify which cards have the lowest interest rates and which ones you owe the most on.
Speaking of that low interest card – if you’ve got some room on that account, it might be a good idea to transfer the balances of higher interest cards on over. A lot of credit card companies offer very reasonable deals on balance transfers. A word of caution: make sure you read all the fine print. Make sure it really is a good deal, and pay close attention to how long the deal will last. You don’t want to transfer big balances over to a lower interest card only to have the interest rate rise. Then you’re stuck in the same boat you were in before! Also keep in mind that you never know until you try – call your credit card companies to ask for a lower interest rate. The worst they can say is no, and if they say yes it will make it that much easier to pay down your debt.
Even if you’re not able to transfer any balances, one key to paying off credit card debt is to pay more than the minimum due. When you think about it, paying the minimum payment is sort of like throwing money at the credit card companies. The less you pay every month, the more they can charge interest on.
That’s taking money away from you and putting it directly into their hands. The best thing to do is pay off as much as you can every month. Just an extra $10 or $15 on each payment can make a difference, but you’ll see an even bigger difference if you can pay double or even triple your minimum payment every month.
Easier said than done, right? Sometimes the only payment you CAN make is the minimum payment. To pay more, you have to think about bringing in some more money. That’s also easier said than done. A lot of experts will recommend that you borrow money – either from your 401K, from your life insurance policy, or even from family members – in order to pay off your credit card debt. Unless you’re in over $10,000 of credit card debt, that’s never a good idea. Why go into more debt to satisfy debt you already have? Under $10,000 is a manageable amount that you should be able to pay off in a year or so provided you get your interest rates down and you pay more than the minimum payment every month.
So, the million dollar question is, how do you start bringing in a little bit more money to help you pay off your credit card debt? You could take on a part time job – which is a big commitment and you might not have time to do it. One idea is to gather up some of your old gold, old silver, old silverware, and old jewelry to sell to one of those online places. That’s a one shot deal and with the current high price of gold, you might be surprised at the amount of money you’ll earn.
Whatever plan you choose, remember that paying off credit cards should be one of your top financial goals. Once you get out from under those oppressive interest rates you’ll be surprised at how free you’ll feel.
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