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A New Yorker in Kansas
Former Wall Street executive bringing financial advice to the Midwest.
How to Get Out of Debt in Four Steps
Posted By Scott Fanuele on Sep 26, 2013
Are you interested in getting out of debt so that you can enjoy the benefits of not owing a part of each paycheck to your debt payments? There are 4 steps to doing this. If you want to get out of debt, you’ll need to learn more about finances, reduce your expenses, pay off your bills intelligently and use a debt consolidation program to reduce your monthly payments. Let’s look at each of these steps in greater detail.
Getting a Financial Education
Nonprofit debt consolidation programs and services offer financial counseling that helps you handle your money more efficiently. You should never feel bad simply because you don’t understand the terms of an agreement or financial contract. Fine print can get very technical and can be frustrating to fully understand. The trick is to be patient and to have the right financial counselors by your side to help you make sense of those terms.
Cutting Costs
Cutting costs frees more money each month that you can use to pay down your loan balances. If you pay more than minimum payments each month, your interest charges shrink, and your balances drop faster. You can use online spreadsheets to create a budget. Record every expense that you incur for one month, and you will marvel at how much of your spending is nonessential. You might find that you can save by adjusting insurance policies, buying groceries in bulk, clipping coupons, brown bagging your lunches or cutting duplicate communications services, such as home phone landlines.
Paying Bills Logically
High interest rates make unsecured debts burdensome and monthly payments high. According to professional financial companies like this one, paying off debts by applying any extra payments you can afford to the account that has the highest interest rate is the best way to get out of debt over time. Once you have paid off the highest, you can target the card with the next highest interest rate.  This is often called the debt snowball method.
Using a Debt Consolidation Service
Nonprofit debt consolidation programs not only help reduce your interest rates and consolidate your unsecured debts; they also help to protect your credit rating and offer credit counseling. Trained counselors create a custom debt management plan by convincing your creditors to lower some interest rates and waive late fees and penalties. More of your monthly payments go toward reducing your balances instead of paying last month’s interest charges. You can get out of debt faster and live better while paying your legitimate obligations.
Keep these steps in mind and you’ll soon be on your way to alleviating the financial burden of your debts.
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How to Get Out of Debt
Posted By Scott Fanuele on Aug 28, 2013
If you