Nobody in their right mind likes to be in debt. It makes you feel powerless at times and can even cause problems with you or other family members.
I was in debt a few years ago and I made a promise to myself, that once I got out of debt I would never look back or walk through that door again.
Takeways
- Save for a rainy day.
- Pay more than just the minimum payment.
- When possible, double up your payments.
I discovered that when you have money concerns, you also begin to have family problems. The family problems are usually started because you and your spouse are nervous about the money situation and as much as we would all like to admit that it isn’t true when we are upset about something, we often place blame or take it out on the ones that are the closest to us.
Every year around income tax time I would say that I was going to pay my bills off with the money that I received. The income tax money would come and there would always be an excuse as to why we couldn’t make that extra payment on a bill.
I did, however, find a lot of tips and tricks along the bumpy ride. I found a lot of ways to get out of debt and I applied them. It took me a little over a year to get out of my $200,000 debt, but I did it. I still do not know how I managed to eliminate my debt the way I did with no help, but I did it.
Credit cards can be a big hassle when you are trying to maintain order with your bills. Credit cards can be nice to have when you don’t have any money, but in the long run, they are nothing but trouble. I cut out all of our credit cards up except for one. The one credit card that I kept the highest interest rate but the lowest spending limit. I kept this one credit card because even though it had the highest interest rate it would also get cut off after a certain limit. Problem solved, if I could only spend so much then I would manage it a little better.
I only used this credit card for emergencies. In fact, I only used it once and that was because my husband’s check was delayed and we needed food.
Must Read:
If you pay more than the minimum payment on your bills, you will actually be saving yourself a lot of money. Each time that there is a balance left on your bills, the interest rate starting eating at your wallet by making the total payout higher. I would recommend paying more than your minimum payment. For instance, if your minimum payment is $65 then you should round it off to $75. You would be surprised at how much you save and how much quicker you get these paid off when you do this.
Resist the urge to renew a loan. I know that it can be very tempting when a loan company sends you an invitation to renew your loan. I don’t recommend doing this even if you think that it would help you because all it does is add more money to your debt and we are trying to refrain from doing this.
If you are too tempted by their offers, either have someone else check your mail and throw these away or ask the companies not to send you mail like this. Even if the company told you that your payments would remain the same, you would still have to pay back more.
Despite what most loan consolidation specialist say, paying off your smaller loans makes more sense than paying off your higher loans. The reason for this is that you can pay two small loans that equal the same monthly amount as your larger loan. If you pay two small loans then it frees up those monthly payments and you can use this towards all of your other bills.
Have you ever thought about saving your change for a rainy day? You know what they say? When it rains, it floods.
I started saving my change and one day I realized that it adds up after a while. You never really know how much you have until you have a lot of change saved. I hate spending change and now I always break dollar bills instead of spending my change. When I get home I empty my pockets out into an old coffee jar. I started doing this because I am one of those people who hate to walk into a store with change.
I simply just keep adding it to my jar until it is full and then I take it to a change exchanger and get the money. I use this as my rainy day fund. I spend the money on myself and my family for all of the hard work that has done on trying to get out of debt.
If you fill the jar completely up, you should have around $500. I will usually fill it up once every two months. I still fill my jar up even though I am out of debt. I do this because you can never tell when something is going to happen. The jar keeps me from taking out another loan, instead I can just cash in the change and have money to help us out.
Once I got most of our bills lowered, I started doubling up on all of my remaining bills. I took the money that I would have spent on the other bills and applied it to the remaining loans. I saved a lot of money doing this and most of the companies offered me cash back for paying off early.
If you decide to try to get out of debt, then I would advise you to check into any consolidating companies before signing up for them. Some of these companies combine your loans and you will actually have to pay longer but with a smaller monthly amount. Do not take out more loans to pay off any of your debt, you will just be accumulating more debt by doing this.
