A Few Thoughts On How To Lower Your Credit Card Debt

Oct 2, 2008 Credit Card Dept

Getting yourself into debt is the easiest thing in the world but, unfortunately, getting out of debt is generally a very long and hard road to travel. For many people nowadays it is credit cards which are the basis of their debt problem and lowering credit card debt takes a bit of planning and a lot of restraint.

The first thing you have to do is begin by lowering your expenditure on your credit cards, and ideally to cease using your cards altogether. Credit cards are much too simple to use and the first trick is to leave your credit cards at home when you go out and to merely take enough cash with you to cover your needs.

Naturally you are still going to see things which you would like to purchase and that you would have purchased if you had had your credit card with you, but the simple fact that you are going to have to return home for your credit card to buy something means that you will think twice about it. With a bit of luck, it will also make you think about whether you really need some things. One of the biggest problems with credit cards is that they allow you to make impulse purchases and nine times out of ten these purchases are things you could well do without.

However, cutting back on your spending is just one half of the equation because you still need to do something to clear your existing debt. Of course cutting down on your expenditure will help because you will now have more money in your pocket and should be able to begin paying off more of your credit card debt every month. Of course this could still leave you contemplating a considerable time period before your card debt is clear, but it is a good start.

Yet another effective way to lower your credit card debt may be credit card debt consolidation which involves taking your present credit card debts and rolling them all into a single card debt with a lower rate of interest. Naturally this does not clear any of your debt but it does slow down the rate of growth of the debt each month as interest is added to your account. This makes it slightly easier to deal with the problem. Today there is terrific competition among the credit card companies and there are all sorts of incentives on offer to consolidate existing card debt, including such things as 0% APR being charged to your new card for the first three or six months. As with any financial offer you do however have to look at the small print very carefully and make sure that you know exactly what type of contract you are signing. If you fail to read the fine print with sufficient you could find yourself jumping out of the frying pan into the fire.

An alternative to debt consolidation is to merely speak to your own credit card company and see if they would be willing to reduce the interest rate on your current card. You might be surprised to find that with so so much competition in the market many companies will look favorably in such a request in order to retain your business.

If you find that despite your best efforts you simply feel that you are not going to be able to get your debt down to a manageable level then you might wish to try negotiating a settlement of your debt with your credit card company. However, negotiating settlement of a credit card debt is something of an art and this is not a path you should follow without professional advice.

There is unfortunately no simple answer to clearing credit card debts and, no matter how you try to dress it up, it really comes down to a mixture of disciplining yourself into reigning in your spending and paying down as much of your balance as you can afford each month. It is also a very good idea to seek professional debt assistance before things get out of control.