Advice On Reducing Your Credit Card Debt

It is the simplest thing in the world to get into debt but, sadly, getting yourself out of debt can be a very hard and long road to travel. For the majority of people nowadays it is credit cards which are the basis of their debt problem and reducing credit card debt takes a bit of planning and a lot of discipline.

The first thing you have to do is start by lowering your expenditure on your credit cards, and preferably to stop using your cards completely. It is much too simple to use credit cards and the first trick is to leave your credit cards at home when you go shopping and to just take sufficient cash with you for your needs.

Naturally you are still going to come across items which you want to buy and which you would have bought had you had a credit card with you, but the simple fact that you have to go back home and get your credit card to buy something will make you think twice about it. Hopefully, it will also get you into the habit of considering whether you really do need some things. One big problem with credit cards is that they let you make impulse buys and nine times out of ten these purchases are things you can live without.

But, reducing your spending is only one half of the solution because you still have to do something to clear your existing debt. Of course reducing your expenditure will help because you will have more money available and should be able to start paying off more of your credit card debt every month. Needless to say this might still leave you contemplating a lengthy period of time before your cards are clear, but it is a very good start.

Yet another valuable way to reduce your credit card debt may be credit card debt consolidation which involves taking your present card debts and rolling them all into a single card debt which has a lower rate of interest. This does not of course clear any of your debt although it does slow down the rate of growth of your debt every month as interest is added to your account. This means that is is slightly easier to deal with the problem. Nowadays there is tremendous competition among the credit card companies and there are all sorts of inducements being offered to consolidate current card debt, including things like 0% APR being charged to a new card for the first three or six months. As with any financial offer you do however have to look at the fine 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 may find yourself jumping out of the frying pan and into the fire.

An alternative to credit card debt consolidation is to merely speak to your credit card company and see if they would be willing to reduce the interest rate on your present card. You could be surprised to find that with so many people moving their accounts to alternative providers many credit card companies will accommodate you in an effort to retain your business.

If you find that in spite of your best efforts you simply feel that you are not going to be able to reduce your debt to manageable levels then you might wish to negotiate a settlement of your debt with your credit card company. However, negotiating settlement of a credit card debt requires skill and this is not a road that you should follow without professional advice.

Unhappily, there is no easy solution to clearing credit card debts and, no matter how you try to dress it up, it comes down to disciplining yourself into cutting back on your expenditure and paying off as much of your balance as you can afford to every month. It is also an excellent idea to get professional assistance to pay personal debt before things run out of control.