The following contains general information on how to take action in starting the process of getting out of debt. A lot of which may seem elemental however, it is hard to re-invent the wheel, but one can always look at it in a different light thus discovering some ideas or some motivation to help their debt situation.
So you find yourself in a debt bind, with bill due dates approaching and things not looking pretty in the bank account. You wonder how you let yourself get to his point, or perhaps there were some things beyond your control such as unforeseen surprise expenses. Regardless you are at a point where the debt downward spiral (having to take loans to pay other loans) is looming. What is one to do?
First off get the attitude of taking charge and making a difference with it. My suggestion is to attack your debt head on, hit it hard to start and you will get the ball rolling in taking charge and managing your debt. But how you ask…Look around you, what do you have in your possession that you can live without? Perhaps an old bike, barbeque, old childrens toys they no longer play with etc. What do you have to loose by having a yard sale?
A few hundred dollars can often be scrounged up by selling old items that you dont even use anymore. Think of some other ways to make (save) a few dollars. How often do you eat out? Could you cut back? How much are you paying for your cable TV., could you get a cheaper package? But what is really important in doing this is that you start the ball rolling. Just for arguments sake, lets say that you owe a creditor $5000 and the annual interest is 12%. If paying $200 per month, it will take 29 months to pay the debt off. Now what if you have put together a bit of money and where able to put down $700 on it and were able to pay $230 per month by cutting back in other areas. Then you have cut it down to 21 months. And you have saved ** $270 in interest charges in the process. But then this amount of $270 can then be put on other debts you may have or invested to earn you money. So you can see that by paying off debts is very advantageous indeed.
Do your homework, count the costs, round up old items to sell, determine ways in which to save. In doing so, it will be a great help in getting out of debt and saving yourself money in the process. Take the matter seriously and to start really try to pack a big punch in paying off a chunk of the debt, you will do yourself a big favor in the months to come in saving interest charges.
** Calculations are: 29 month X $200 = $5800 21 months X $230 + 700 = $5530
For a savings of $270
Kevin Dunham is the owner of http://www.debt10.com/ Visit this site for more Debt Consolidation Information.
