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getting out of debt

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Anonymous
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getting out of debt

i  have some large amount of credit card debt. say around 40,000 ? how long would it take me to get out of this kind of debt. which is the best way to go. I am doing credit cousling for some of the cards and some I am paying on my own.  
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Anonymous
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Re: getting out of debt

Get a frugal lifestyle (maybe get a loan to pay them off, of course only if you can get a lower interest rate but you might not be approved because of the high debt).

I would make a list of all the credit cards (the ones your paying on your own) starting from the highest interest rate to the lowest and start focusing on paying off the highest first, right down the list. I would still pay the other cards of course but my main focus would be the high interest ones.

Get a library card and check out some books on simple and frugal living to help you cut down your expenses. Also, if you can, I would recommend holding a yard sale so you can get rid of some of the stuff you no longer use (perhaps bought on impulse?). eBay can be a good help if you research eBay prices well before you sell. See if you can sell your car and buy a cheaper one.

A second (part time) job might also be a good idea but only if you are single (don't neglect your family!!).
Message 2 of 4
Anonymous
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Re: getting out of debt

Also, check out http://www.thesimpledollar.com/

The guy that runs the website always has better advice than me Smiley Very Happy Theres not nearly as much content as this forum but its still very useful.
Message 3 of 4
Anonymous
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Re: getting out of debt

I would recommend http://mevelopes.com to help you budget and track your spending so you can see where your over spendings. Two civets about about the service. 1. if you owe more on your CCs than you net worth then it a little cumbersome. as site name suggest it uses a electronic version of envelope accounting. and the it handles credit purchases is such , you have X amount of money in you eating out envelope, you put dinner on a credit card, When mvelopes downloads the purchase your your credit cards online banking , it's place in new unassigned transactions, you drag and drop the transaction to the eating out envelope, then behind the scenes mvelopes moves the amount to cover the purchase from eating out envelope moves it to a money for , so you can see what difficulty, you can have managing cards you don't have the cash to pay off. if you have cards you are paying off, but don't use it may be easier to not add it as a spending account, and just make a regular envelope to hold it's payment there by not having a money for envelope made for the card.. 2) When you sign up for the trial, Start on the 1st of the month when there is no new activity on you accounts cause it only downloads current balance and only downloads transactions after the account is added to the system. Take my case. By the time I started my trial on July 9th I have had $374.42 in checks and $143.56 in credit card changes already clear my accounts so I couldn't have any entries for my July checks and had $143.59 unitemized credit card charges, but since PIF on the CC , I just had to manually move move from the income cash pool(the envelope where unassigned money sits) to my CCcs Money for envelope. They also good about getting your banks to work with their service. There is a issue with cookie based two tier authorization, the way it works, is that every time you log in your bank checks for a cookie, if not found, then you're e-mail a one time use code you need to get into your account. Problem is that it's not your system accessing the account, it's theirs and it's not allowed to keep cookies, so without putting in a support ticket, it's not that it can't update the account, you just have to provide a one time temporary code to update it till they fix it.
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