5 Easy Steps to Get Out of Debt {Ultimate Guide}

When credit is easily available to all, people tends to spend more money than they earn. As credit gets easier to obtain, it is reasonable to expect that debt will increase each year. Debt will burden you and gives you less freedom to do things that you want for yourself. I have my own experience that the sooner you correct your course of debt; the easier it is to find the right way on how to get debt free.

1. GET ORGANIZED

The first step to take is really to get organized. That is the part a lot of people are afraid to tackle. So take a Saturday morning, make yourself a really nice brunch and the make the list of all different debts that you need to pay off. What I meant by that is make a list of exactly how much you owe; credit cards, student loan, car loans, mortgage, to each different place. So if you have a visa that owes $2000 to, put that first on list. You also need to know your interest rate, the minimum payment and the due date for that debt. Keep doing that for all different things you are trying to pay off. That way you can prioritize which debts you want to tackle first.

2. CREATE A PLAN

Once you see the picture of everything you owe, you can create a plan. But before you create a plan, it is important to take a step back. There are few things that you need to be aware of.

1. Be realistic when creating the plan. You do not want to set yourself up to fail. Paying off debt can take a lot of long time. 2 years, 3 years or even longer. So this is not something that you will fix overnight.
2. The other important thing you need to be aware of tough is that this is temporary. We are not talking about forever. So any sort of lifestyle adjustments that you make now to pay off your debt will eventually end. And you absolutely can pay it off. I have seen so many people doing it.

3. MAKE MINIMUM PAYMENTS ON TIME

To tackle the debt at the bare minimum you have to make all your minimum payments on time. That’s very important for your credit card score. So you can setup automatic payments to make sure those payments will always go out on time in full. Obviously you will have to pay more than the minimum payment to put a dent in your debt. But exactly how much will vary from person from person and it could even vary from month to month.

4. RULE OF THUMB

A good rule of thumb is to aim to pay double your minimum payment to any of your debts. That might be hard in some cases. So even paying $20 or $50 more can speed up the process of getting out of debt. I would recommend paying the highest debt first. Some people recommend paying the smallest debt first. So if that works better for you, great. The point is to gain momentum so that you begin to see your debt balance decrease. It might take a little bit of trial and error to find out which one works best for you.

5. CHANGING OF LIFESTYLE

The hardest part about paying down debt is it really does require a lifestyle change. Again, it is just temporary. But you will have to cut back on certain areas of your spending. If you are going to free up money in your budget to put toward paying down your debt. Once you have a plan in mind stick to it.  But if extra cash pops into your bank account from a tax refund or a really generous gift, there is nothing wrong with putting that towards the debt as well to fast forward the process. Make an aim to save certain amount every month

Paying down debt is a temporary goal and one that is achievable. All it takes is getting your plan in place, sticking to it and watching it happen.

Author Bio:

Abigail Kent is a enthusiastic blogger, who loves to write on trending topics related to lifestyle, travelling and money saving tips. She’s currently associated with Discount Codez, an online coupon code directory offering latest and updated deals, promo’s and vouchers. Follow her at Twitter