Get Out Of Debt Forever

As the economy continues to be a challenge, everyday people like you and I find it difficult to keep up financially. This is especially true as credit bills begin to add up, plunging you into credit trouble. However, if you are not in trouble yet and able to start learning about the world of credit cards, there are a lot of things you can do to avoid credit card debt before it becomes a problem.

If you are just getting your first credit cards, learning the ropes early is an outstanding goal that can save you a lot of headaches later. Anyone who is battling tens of thousands of dollars in credit card debt can tell you it can take years, if not decades, even under the best of conditions, to pay off the debt. And during that time, the thousands of dollars going down the drain to pay off the credit interest does not buy food, entertainment or clothes. It just goes away with no value to you at all.

But if you are new to the world of credit, getting a credit card is a good thing. However, once you get one, keeping it under control is vital. It is amazingly easy to use a credit card once it comes. In fact, the retail world makes it difficult to conduct many transactions any other way. You can pay for gas at the pump with a card and even use it to pay for groceries. But for all the convenience a credit card offers, you can have a whopper of a credit card bill at the end of the month. And if you don’t pay that bill off, it becomes the first step on a lifelong sentence in credit card debt jail.

In order to keep building your credit rating, which has real value to you, there are some guidelines you should follow to use credit responsibly. Remember, credit card companies do not tell you that making a charge on a credit card is a loan. Even if you just charge $10 to go to the movies, you took out an unsecured loan to finance that movie ticket.

So, keep in mind you will be paying back everything you charge once you start using a credit card. It is NOT free money. A good practice is to save every receipt every month and keep a running tally of what you have spent on credit. Not only can you use that to cross check the credit card statement each month, you can update your tally so you know for certain you will be able to pay it off when the bill comes.

Although the number one best way to keep credit problems under control is to pay off the credit card each month, it is not a bad idea to let a little bit of the debt drift from month to month. This builds your credit history and credit rating which will pay you well down the road when you want to buy a larger purchase. But staying on top of your credit, and what is going onto your card, you will start out with the kind of habits that will lead to a life of good credit use without credit card jail. And that is a wonderful gift to give yourself early in life.

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There is another level to what should be the purely financial problem of how to handle your credit card debt. That side has to do with the human toll that carrying that debt from month to month and year to year can have on a person and on a family. A family’s finances are at the core of what make the family work. The old joke goes “Money can’t buy happiness but it can rent it.” And while that’s cute, money and debt can make the difference between a family that is able to live peacefully within its means and one that is on the verge of disaster.

So when you sit down and decide that its time you took seriously the challenge of conquering your credit card debt, you have some battles to fight that are not just about interest rates and minimum payments. The truth is that none of us can face down something as overwhelming as a massive credit card debt if we just don’t think we can do it.

A person’s self confidence is rooted in the idea that he or she can and has had success at facing a challenge before. So we can take on a new challenge because you did it before and you can do it again. But when it comes to facing tens of thousands of dollars of credit card debt, it’s possible you have never faced such an elusive enemy. It is an enemy that seems to want to swallow you up. And that can cause despair and make you just want to throw up your hands and give up.

So the question comes, when is the best time to panic? Well, you know the answer to that question is – NEVER! This is not just pie in the sky optimism talking here. There are some very pragmatic reasons that you should stubbornly refuse to panic no matter how bad the credit card debt threatens to get.

For one thing, if you are the responsible adult in the house whose job it is to handle the finances of the family, those people you love depend on you to guide your family out of messes. This is the job of a head of household so the last thing they want to see is for you to come unglued because of a few bills. So for the sake of the people you love, keep your head and keep looking for options and answers.

The other reason to not panic is that there is always something you can do. You can get another job or find another income source to keep paying those debts down. And as long as you can make the payments on any given month, there is hope the next month you will start to pull ahead. As long as you have your health and there are jobs to be had, you can work and get out of this mess. It might take some hard work but you can do it.

But even if you cannot work and the bills keep getting higher and higher, that is not a good reason to panic. You can renegotiate with lenders to get some control over the debt. You can use a credit consolation service to get your payments down and get on a schedule to pay them off over time. And at the very end of the spectrum of what you can do, there is bankruptcy. And as bad as that word sounds, bankruptcy is not the end of your world. Lots of people use it and come out the other side of it fine and ready to take on the world again.

So take some heart in the fact that you really are not doomed and there is always a way out of the mess you are in. It might take some looking, some creative thinking and some leadership to get there. But you can only find those resources inside yourself if you stubbornly refuse to panic.

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In this modern time where the economy has been such a challenge for everyday people like you and me to keep up, it’s easy to get into credit trouble when your credit bills begin to stack up. So if you are in the position to just start learning the ropes of the world of credit cards, there are a lot of things you can do to avoid credit card debt before it sneaks up on you and keep your nose clean, as they say.

This is an outstanding goal for you if you are just getting your first credit cards. If you know or talk to anyone who is battling tens of thousands of dollars of credit card debt, you know what a jail sentence it can be. Once that credit card debt gets that high, the time it will take even under the best of conditions to bring it down runs into the years if not decades. And for all that time, thousands of dollars of money goes down the drain to credit interest that doesn’t buy you any food, tickets to the movies or new clothes. It just goes away with no value to you at all.

But if you are new to the world of credit, getting a credit card is a good thing. But once you get one, keeping it under control is job one. You will find it amazingly easy to use a credit card once it comes. In fact, the retail world makes it difficult to conduct transactions any other way. You can pay for gas at the pump that way and even charge your groceries at the grocery store. And while all of these great uses for credit are helpful, you can end up with a whopper of a credit card bill at the end of the month. And if you don’t pay that bill off, that is the first step on a lifelong jail term in credit card debt jail.

So there are some guidelines you should follow to both use credit responsibly but also to keep building your credit rating which has a real value to you. Remember that what the credit card companies don’t tell you is that making a charge on a credit card is a loan. Even if you just charge ten bucks to go to the movies, you took out an unsecured loan to finance that movie ticket.

So once you start using a credit card, keep in mind that you will be paying back everything you run up on it. It is NOT free money. A good practice is to save every receipt every month and keep a running tally of what you have spent on credit. Now only can you use that to cross check your credit card, it keeps you honest because each time you add a charge to your credit card, you can update your tally so you know for certain that you will be able to pay it off when the bill comes.

Paying off the credit card each month is the number one best way to keep your credit problems under control. Now it isn’t a bad idea to let a little bit of the debt drift from month to month. This builds your credit history and credit rating which will pay you well down the road when you want to buy a larger purchase. But by staying on top of your credit and what is going onto your card, you will start out with the kind of habits that will lead to a life of good credit use without credit card jail. And that is a wonderful gift to give yourself early in life.

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It is easy to eliminate credit card debt.

Just about anybody who says this is sure to be labelled as a complete moron. However, I would like to remind you of a famous quote “Where there is will, there is way”. So that’s how easy it is to find a way to wipe out your credit card debt. What it really boils down to is all you absolutely need to wipe out your credit card debt is “Will Power”.

No matter what methods you choose to use to wipe out your credit card debt, no matter what debt assistance company you approach (for advice on how to eliminate credit card debt), no matter what your friends might tell you, “Will Power” is essential if you want to get out of your credit card debt.

In fact, this starts from the very word go. Just analyze the last part of my previous statement “… is crucial IF YOU WANT TO WIPE OUT credit card debt”, this statement itself implies that “IF YOU WANT TO” or we can rephrase that as “if you have the will power to” wipe credit card debt.

Will power is what it will take to control your urge to buy everytime you get the urge to splurge on unnecessary purchased. Will power is vital to in your pursuit of freedom. Will power is needed to analyze your present financial situation. Will power is needed to sit down and plan the ways and means that you can adopt to eliminate credit card debt. Will power is needed to approach a credit card debt assistance company.

You also need will power and patience for researching the market for the best balance transfer plans. So really, will power is needed for every aspect of wiping out your credit card balanced. Since “Will Power” is the only thing you need to wipe credit card debt, we can say that it is easy to wipe out your credit card debt. However, this is easier said than done for will power for anything (be it will power to wipe out your credit card debt or anything else for that matter is hard to come by.

One way of strengthening your will power, that is required to wiping out your credit card debt, is to visualize the life after you successfully wiped out credit card debt. Visualize yourself with the peace of mind that you will get after you are completely free from your credit card debt. How much fun it would be!! Furthermore, the sense of accomplishment would be no lesser either (after all not everyone is able to get completely out of debt). And if you do it you will feel a sense of power over your debt once and for all. Try to think about all these good things and build your confidence and your will power to completely wipe out your credit card debt once and for all. There is really nothing as powerful as will power. Just keep telling yourself over and over “Where there is will, there is way”. Than before your know you will be completely debt free.

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Most people don’t know what their credit scores are, or understand what they mean. Knowing about your scores and having information on the three bureaus is a powerful tool you need to arm yourself with!

Here’s how it all goes …

Payment History 35%:
This is the largest contributing factor for your credit scores and represents your history of making payments with your creditors.

Credit Utilization: 30%
Credit utilization shows how much credit you’re actively using. One simple way to increase your scores is by keeping balances at or below 50% of your overall credit limit.

Credit History 15%:
How long your accounts have been open. Longer more established accounts are more positively weighted than newer accounts.

Recent Inquiries: 10%
Recent inquiries let you know which prospective creditors have looked into your credit. Scores can be lowered by too many inquiries.

Types of Credit In Use: 10%
Types of credit in use lists both the amount and type of accounts that you have.

Now that we have a little knowledge under our belts, here are the 2 things you can do in the next 30 minutes to gain some points very quickly

Raise your limits!
Raising your credit limits is much easier than you might think. Most people don’t realize that just by simply asking for a credit limit increase, you will most likely get one. We have proven this over and over again with clients. Just call the phone number on the back of your credit cards, and tell them you are considering transferring the balance to another card with a higher limit and lower interest rate, but that you would like to keep the account if they could just raise the credit limit. In my personal experience, it has worked 100% of the time. Often they will also lower the interest rate as a bonus. Lowering the interest rate will not help your credit score, but it will sure help your finances.

Let’s say for example you have a credit card with a $5,000 credit limit, and you currently have a $4,000 balance on it (80% utilized). After your quick phone call, they agree to raise your credit limit to $6,500 (now 62% utilized). This alone will immediately increase your credit scores. Remember in the “Credit Utilization” section above, we want to ideally keep our balances below 50% of the credit limit. This brings us to the next powerful tip.

Lower Your Balances!
Continuing from the example above, you are now 62% utilized on your credit card. This means you still have some room to further maximize your scores. If you pay $750 on this credit card, you will bring the balance down to 50% of the new credit limit ($3,250 balance on $6,500 credit limit). Now, you might be saying that you don’t have $750 to pay down your credit card. That’s ok, you could stop here, you have already increased your scores, and you can get the limit raised for all your credit card accounts. However, if you are trying to buy a home, or even a car, you can potentially save thousands in interest on your new loan and get a lower monthly payment, just by paying a little down on your current accounts. When that results in higher credit scores, you may qualify for much better loan terms.

All of the tips listed above have shown to be effective and powerful in helping to achieve even better credit scores. One past result showed that these tips helped to increase the credit limit on 3 credit cards, and scores were boosted by 105 points!

Keep in mind that these techniques work best for those who have a good credit history, and at least 3 open, established credit accounts. For those with more challenged credit or a negative credit history, a more aggressive approach and credit repair strategies may be more appropriate.

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