Credit card debt is a growing sickness in the United States and
Europe. It is very important to eliminate debt and take control
of your financial health.
In the section below, I have listed the best strategy to erase
credit card debt. This strategy is tried and true and often
recommended by financial planners and debt consolidation firms.
- In an Excel spreadsheet list all your
credit cards, balance, credit card interest rate and minimum
payment from your most recent credit card statement. If you are
not computer savvy, you can list them on paper.
- Sort the list in ascending order of interest rate so that
the credit card with highest interest rate is at the top and the
credit card with lowest interest rate is at the bottom.
- Make a count of minimum payment of all the credit cards in
the list you just created.
- Now calculate how much money you can save to pay off your
credit card debt and become debt free. If you cannot pay off
more than the minimum payment, it is time to do some budgeting
to save more and pay towards your credit cards.
- Each month pay off the minimum on all your credit cards.
However, on the credit card with the highest interest rate, pay
the minimum plus the additional amount you have saved to pay off
your credit card debt.
- Continue to follow this strategy until the credit card with
highest interest rate is completely paid off. In a similar
manner, work on paying off your second credit card but remember
to make minimum payments on the remaining cards.
- Besides the above golden strategy, you can call your credit
card companies to request for a lower interest rate. Due to
stiff competition, many of the credit card companies will
readily agree. Lower interest rates mean you can pay off your
debt much faster.
- In some cases, credit card companies will not be willing to
reduce your interest rate. This might be a good time to hop on
the internet and do some research on credit cards and get a new
low interest card. Many companies will allow you an introductory
rate for your new credit card.
