Have you ever been succumbed to the lure of credit cards and found yourself in debt.

Please,have a seat – Welcome to the ever growing club of consumer who struggle to reduce credit card debts. Your biggest challenge now is to find a way out of this situation and avoid having to pay anyone to help you do it.

The options at this stage are usually as follow (depending on the level of credit card debt):

• Consolidate the debt into a loan.
• Debt Management.
• Bankruptcy.
• Do Nothing.
• Just continue to pay off the cards over as long as it takes.
• Effect minimum payments and keep spending.
• Make an effective DIY plan.

The more popular solutions – such as debt management and loan consolidation -we see being touted everywhere are the ones that put your money in other people’s pocket. I don’t know about you but for me becoming free from debt should not involve spending more money, or *borrowing your way out of debt*.

So how does a Do It Yourself system work?

To break it down into 5 steps it looks something like this:

1. Address your spending habits and why you are in this situation.

You have to control you money so at to ever win with money and have a comfortable financial future – not the other way round. Take complete control and set yourself some realistic yet desirable goals for the future.

2. Be aware of your options, the ins and outs of how they work – and why they are not for you.

You will be tempted along the way by quick fix ‘make it all better’ solutions like consolidation loans and debt management. As already mentioned there is a multibillion dollar industry making a very healthy profit from consumer debt. Your DIY plan does not involve *paying to get out of debt*.

3. Know your situation.

Any system about debt relief requires a bit of budgeting. As long you’ve followed the rest of the plan so far, have desirable goals and no intention of taking an easy -and expensive – way out you won’t have trouble budgeting.

You must also know your credit score. There are a staggering amount of mistakes found on credit scores that result in people paying more interest than they should. If you are eligible for lower rates and 0% APR cards to move expensive balances on to – you need to know about it.

4. Maximize income,Minimize outgoings and leverage your cash flow.

If you are able to pay less for utilities and day to day expenses you should. There is a very fine art of money saving that you will become very good at if you’re going to be successful at this.

Consumer education,home economics, and bargain hunting can save you incredible amounts of cash that can go toward paying off your debt quicker.

If you’re really serious about getting out of debt,you can take it a step further and create a secondary source of income. Be it a second job, or using a natural skill/strength you have that can earn you money in your spare time.

With the opportunities available online it’s never been easier to find those who are seeking out some knowledge, experience and skills that you have and that they would pay you money for.

5. Form your system and put it into action.

Having followed the first 4 steps above and laid some sturdy foundations you are now in a position to develop a quite powerful ‘snowball’ plan. That is a system that gains momentum as you execute it.

This step is very dependant on the first 4 steps and generating an extra figure that you can assign to snowballing your credit card debt. As the debts get paid off the figure grows and subsequently clears the rest of the debts a lot quicker – saving you a tidy amount of interest in the process.

It is very possible to use a DIY plan and enjoy great success from it, yes it takes a bit of hard work and discipline on your part but the alternatives just cost you more and keep you in debt for longer.

It’s your life,it’s your money – if you want to truly own them both then you have to take control and eliminate credit card debts – not give it over to someone else. Control or be controlled, the choice is yours.

This entry was posted on Thursday, July 16th, 2009 at 3:27 pm and is filed under Finance. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.