If none of the previously mentioned methods are options, then you really have the hardest road of all which is to incrementally pay

down the debt with what you have each month. That means paying more than the minimum monthly required amount so you can get

ahead of the interest charge and actually eliminate some of your debt.

If you don’t have enough money to do this regularly, then you need to look

at your other expenses and eliminate some of them to free up the cash.

That means doing without and making some personal sacrifices. At first,

most people will say they can’t think of

anything but there are plenty of areas to

squeeze. Stop smoking, stop buying

gourmet coffee every morning, bag a

lunch instead of eating out, take a bus

to work or school instead of driving. Do

you have a landline phone and a cell

phone? Get rid of one of them. Those

are just examples but each represents

dozens of dollars each month that can

instead go to paying off debt. Get rid of

the luxuries and live at a practical level

for a while. After a few months you will

realize how easy it is to do with less.

Once you start to free up some cash you can try the snowball payment method. This is the great big

secret offered if you pay a debt consolidator for their service. They will tell you what you can already

do on your own for a fee. And that is, take all your bills and focus on the one debt that is the easiest

and fastest to pay off. Put the minimum amount on the others and pile up all your free money into

jumbo payments on the quickest debt to eliminate. When done with debt number one, repeat, and

do again with debt number two. You will notice your payments get bigger and you’re wiping out more

debt faster. Keep repeating until you have done this for all your outstanding debt accounts. At the

end, you’re paid off completely with a large chunk of free monthly change in your pocket. Oh, and

you didn’t have to pay a fee to a consolidator for the free advice.

Sometimes your various debt lines are two much and you need to get handle on the whole problem.

This is usually due to bad cash flow management and too many bills hitting at different times in the

month. Most people have their best cash flow when they get paid. But the stretch towards the end

before the next paycheck is the worst, scraping pennies to get by. Then comes a bill due 3 days

before the next paycheck. It screws everything up. Consolidating all your various debts into one

debt and one payment eliminates this timing problem.

Another thing to keep in mind is that you don’t want to pay more interest than you have to. Interest

is essentially the “profit” lenders make on their loan to you. There is no benefit to you, but 100% free

money for them. So use the lenders against each other. Look for ways to swap high-interest loans

with cheaper, low-interest loans. The difference can save you quite a few dollars you can then direct

to higher payments on the principal, the amount of the loan you borrowed and owe back. Do the

math, 5% is a lot cheaper than 21% interest.

Copyright 2009 PayingOffDebt.us

When is zero the best number?

When paying off your debt!