The following is a guest post by Debt Advisory Line.
It wasn’t always this easy to get into debt. In today’s world, as you may know from personal experience, you can literally walk into any department store, pick out a large screen TV of your liking, charge it on your credit card and subsequently wind up in a significant amount of debt that may take a long time to pay off. Sometimes, it doesn’t even end there. Balance transfers are used to increase credit, and soon enough, repairs for that very TV, for your car, groceries, and other various expenses can find their way onto your credit card bill as well and your debt level can quickly rise beyond control.
What are your options, if you’re carrying a balance on your credit card? To assist you with finding a solution to your problems, we’ve collected some of the most proven methods:
Cut down on secondary expenses
As we build more and more expenditures into our lives, more and more of our wants become “needs”; things we think that we can’t do without. If you examine these expenses more closely, though, there’s actually a lot that you can trim. Consider the following costs:
- Cable TV (~50/month)
- Mobile phone with data plan (~50/month)
- Eating fast food for lunch three times a week (~130/month)
If you removed all of these expenses from your credit card bill, how much could you save over one year? Let’s say you’re paying 19% interest, then you could save this much:
230/month = 2,760 in additional debt reduction plus 232.80 in saved interest just for that year alone.
Get a part-time job
What if you’ve already cut down as much as you can, but things are still looking tough? You can always get additional income on the side. Let’s say you work an additional 10 hours a week and you keep 80 net from those 10 hours. Again, considering a rate of 19%, here’s what you could save if you applied this to your credit card debt:
346/month = 4,152 in additional debt reduction plus 355.45 in saved interest just for that year alone. That would make quite a dent in your debt!
Seek help and advice
Debt Advisory Line offers professional credit card debt help and advice. Although these services do not provide a free “get out of jail” card, they can still provide much-needed help and advice. Contact us now to learn more about how we can help you with your credit card debt.
It’s tough to get out of the hole when you owe a lot of money. Good tips on cutting as much expense as possible. When you’re in debt, those little luxuries has got to go.
And it gets harder the deeper you go. It’s like sinking in the ocean — it’s going to take more effort to get back to the surface the deeper you go and it takes less effort to just let yourself sink, but if you wait too long, you’ll never make it and you’ll drown.
I think most people can benefit from starting some sort of side business/hustle as well. With the internet, it’s so easy to get started blogging or starting some sort of website.
The Internet has lowered entry costs nearly to $0, except for time… so anyone can enter and compete!
The CARD Act has done a wonderful job of streamlining and clarifying the credit process, but it’s not bulletproof by any means. Always do your research and ask lots of questions: ultimately, the best person to protect your credit is you.
I recently went in to take the data plan off of my mobile phone. In fact, I changed from my little HTC Snap (internet, pictures, etc.) back over to my old RAZR (no pictures and no internet). Needless to say, after they “adjusted” the service cost, I saved a whopping– Are you ready for this? –THREE DOLLARS. Tell me that isn’t insane. After removing the data plan from my phone, it switched the plan my husband and I were on. So, his rates went up, and mine basically stayed the same, because the plan changed. Umm… okay. I use 100 minutes a month on my cell phone. Pretty sure $145 a month seems a bit high for that.
Woah! Are there no competitors in your area? If I was paying that much my eyeballs would probably pop out of their sockets.
Great ideas, but you must change what got you into the mess so you don’t add more.
Yes, I agree. I think as part of reducing expenses and gaining side income you will also learn some habits that you can use to help avoid getting into a similar situation… that’s why it’s good to always try and help yourself out, too.
Some good tips! Sometimes the only way out of debt is to get a second job. It takes a lot of hard work but when you quit paying attention to it and look back you realize how much of an impact you made paying off your debt.
And with the second job you’ll have less time to be bored and spend money needlessly or frivolously. Maybe when you pay off the debt you’ll have changed some of the habits that led you into getting into debt in the first place.
It’s amazing how many people have luxuries, but they label them as necessities. I currently have a touch-screen phone, but I don’t have a data plan. I really want an iPhone when my plan expires, but I’m not sure I can justify it! It’s more money per month, and it’s really unnecessary. We’ll have to see what the cashflow is looking like once that day comes….
I’m not sure there’s a difference between wants and needs, because honestly we could live in small apartments and buy only the basics. Maybe we wouldn’t feel comfortable, but we would most certainly survive.
So the truth is, pretty much everything is a want. It’s just a question of priorities.
I like how you broke down your examples of secondary expenditures. Like you said, many of our wants become needs, like cable television. About a year ago, my wife and I took a serious look at our cable bill and decided we would try to do away with cable and use only Netflix’s Instant Streaming instead. It was one of the easiest financial decisions we’ve made.
People assume it’s hard to live without the things society considers normal, like cable, multiple cars, smart phones, and expensive electronics, but really, it’s just about breaking away from what everyone else is doing and trying something for yourself.
Thanks for the read,
Timothy
That’s very true, Timothy! I do have a smart phone, but I got it because it brings me a lot of utility and enjoyment. I don’t even have a TV in my condo and I’m not in a rush to get one. I believe that nearly everything is a want but most people simply don’t have their priorities in order. They think they’re happy spending all that money in the present but the truth is a lot of it is just a deadweight loss and if they saved that money instead, they’d have a lot more enjoyment overall.
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