Get Out of Debt Checklist
Want to get out of debt, but not sure where to start? Get started with this checklist in only seven steps.
Reduce Your Rates
Contact your credit card companies to ask for a better interest rate; look into consolidating your student loans (if you haven't consolidated them already), and check to see if refinancing your mortgage makes sense.
Sound like a lot of work? Just remember: lower rates means less for you to pay.
Separate the Good from the Bad
Divide your debts into "good debts" and "bad debts." For the purpose of this exercise, consider good debt to be any debt that you took on for something that you expect to go up in value (your house, your education, your business) and bad debt to be any debt that you took on for something that you expect to go down in value (your car, furniture, meals out, vacations, clothes).
Dive into Your Plan
Make the minimum payment on all your debts, and apply as much money as you can to the first debt on your pay off list. Do this each month until you wipe out your first debt. Then, start again with the next debt on your list. Keep going until all of your bad debts have been paid off.
Build a Better Future
Have all of your debts paid off? Then, it's time to build the future that you've always dreamed of! Create a fat emergency fund; save for your retirement; travel the world; take up a new hobby. With debt out of the picture, you're in charge.