The elimination of personal debt is always a good idea; removing debt is always advantageous in many ways. It doesn't matter who you are wealthy and have huge debts, or who are regular person with a small amount of debt.
Being in debt always causes problems in the end, and for most regular people debt can increase year on year without a person really noticing, or realizing that there is a creeping debt problem.
Debt can cause all kinds of problems, not just financial ones. The stresses and strains of being in debt causes many divorces, marital problems and all kinds of physical and mental abuse. Debt has many far reaching consequences that can still be present years after the debts have been paid off.
The best solution is always to reduce or eliminate all of your debts as quickly as humanly possible. Below we have listed some simple options that may assist regular individuals and families. Who find that their debts are starting to accumulate, and want to reverse this potentially problematic situation.
Your first action should be to stop increasing your debt immediately. This means stop spending money without proper due consideration. The reason you are in debt is almost certainly because of thoughtless spending. This is the root of most financial problems in households across America.
Leave your credit cards at home locked up in a safe location; only carry one card with you for genuine emergency use, and not for impulse buying. Better still take your cards down to your bank and ask the staff to hold them in their safe. This way they will become inconvenient to use without proper thought and justification.
In just one month you will be amazed how much your spending will drop on all kinds of items. When you do not have the convenience of plastic money to buy items that you do not really need.
Use a computer program or a simple piece of paper to work out your current debts. Once you have worked them out, you will probably be shocked at the total amount that you owe. Americans on average, underestimate their total debts by 40%. This may be a genuine miscalculation, or more probably, it is a psychological wish to avoid confronting the size of the problem.
You should use this list as a permanent reminder of your level of debt. Keeping it updated as you pay off your debts, can be a great mental stimulant to push you towards further reducing your debt problems.
You should certainly endeavor to calculate a workable budget that you can live with month to month. Wherever possible, overspending on major and very minor items should be eliminated completely. You should seek ways of reducing regular unnecessary payments on items such as entertainment, luxury foods, unnecessary use of your car, and possibly dozens of other unnecessary expenditures.
Adjust your mental attitude to a more frugal lifestyle, where avoiding spending money becomes a way of life. This does not mean that you need to live in poverty or misery; it just means that you need to carefully assess how you spend your hard earned cash.
As part of your budget, you should calculate how much money you actually need each week to spend on all your usual items, such as groceries. You should then withdraw that amount of money in cash from your bank, that way you should not overspend, beyond your new budget limit.
This is also a very useful tool for avoiding those impulse purchases. If you don't have the cash or a credit card to pay for an item, this will force you to rethink if you actually need the item.
You should defiantly spend a very long time considering the purchase of big ticket items. One way of assessing an items real worth, is to calculate the value of, for example, a new car. By working out how many days, you had to work to pay for not only the cost of the vehicle, but also the added cost of interest payments.
In addition, perhaps when you realize that for the next three years Monday's pay, every week, for the next 150 weeks will be going to pay for a car. Moreover, that by the time you have finished paying for it, will be worth less than half of the amount of money you have spent. You may then wonder if your present car is all that bad after all.
What is really required to eliminate your debts as a focused mind that realizes how much self discipline is needed. And is prepared to invest the time and effort to remove the stranglehold that debt has on your family.
Once you have relieved yourself of that burden you will be amazed how much free cash you will have available every month. Because you are not using that money to make payments of the principle and interest on multiple unnecessary debts.
