How To Pay Off Your Credit Card Debt The Right Way

Who doesn’t want to eliminate their credit card debt? Ask around, and you’ll have no trouble finding more than the handful of people who want to pay off that debt but are stuck in minimum payment purgatory. In that place, you’re paying the very least you have to, and rarely getting ahead in terms of the actual balance changing. In fact, what is happening is interest is accumulating and quite simply you’re never getting ahead. Of course, paying something versus missing a payment is better, but the idea behind paying on the credit card should go far beyond just making a payment for the sake of doing so. So with that, how exactly do you avoid swimming in debt and watching it go up or remain stagnant with your payments? Far too often, the average consumer looks at their debt as a whole entity, rather than focusing on one particular line of credit or card specifically. You need to take stock and inventory of what your debt looks like and start with the most pressing, which usually means the one with the highest interest rate. Tackling debt that is no interest or part of a promotional period is perfectly fine if it is your only debt to speak of; you have to figure that a card or line of credit that is tipping the scales at 10% or higher is more pertinent than one that has zero interest. That said, the zero interest card is only for a small amount of time, so that means you have to pay attention to accumulating interest rates not crushing you when that period is up. One option most take is the balance transfer, which is something that is certainly doable if you find the right deal. Most include a transfer fee, which is a percentage of the balance being sent from old card to new one. Those are fairly standard, but the interest rate is key as is the term. A balance transfer only works as good as the person committing to it, meaning you should really try hard to not transfer balances unless your plan of attack is to pay off the balance within the agreed upon time of the interest rate promotion. Debt certainly can cast quite the shadow over your money and subsequent financial future, so the wanting and willingness to pay it off certainly is there. But doing so has to come with decisions that are smart and focus on elimination rather than simply extending.