When you’re in debt, it can feel like a mountain that you’re never going to be able to reach the top of. But once you do reach the summit, you’ll be amazed at just how light you feel and how much more money you have to retain control of over the course of a month. However, to get to this point, you’ve got to have a plan in place for repayment of your debts.
To help you in doing this, here are three ways to better manage your debt repayments.
Get An Accurate Report Of All Your Debts
In order to really start making progress on paying off your debt, you first have to know where you owe money and exactly how much money you owe. Without this information, you can’t create an accurate and complete plan for how you’ll go about paying off this debt.
When making this calculation, make sure you calculate not only the total amount of money that you owe right now, but also how much you’re paying in interest and what your monthly payments are. This way, you can know how much you’re responsible for right now, how much more you’ll be responsible for when paying all of the interest on your revolving balances, and the total amount you’ll be paying to get completely out of debt.
Pick A Debt Strategy The Will Work For You
Depending on how much debt you have and how you feel about your debt, you’ll want to pick a debt repayment strategy that will work for you.
There are quite a few different strategies you can choose from for repaying your debt. One option is to get rid of the smallest amount of debt first and then add those payments to the next smallest debt until all your debt is gone, often called the debt snowball. You can also try paying off the debt with the largest interest rate first so that you don’t have to pay more interest than is necessary, which is called the debt avalanche. Or, if you have too many different debts to effectively manage on your own, you can also consolidate your debt payments and just pay everything at once each month.
Don’t Allow Yourself To Create More Debt
When you’re working hard on paying off your debt as quickly as possible, the one thing that can majorly set you back is if you continue to add to your debt. Knowing this, you should make it part of your debt repayment plan to not create any more debt at this time. Put your credit cards away and stop using them until your debt and spending is back under control.
If you’re having a hard time managing the repayment of your debts, consider using the tips mentioned above to help you overcome this.
