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Debt Reduction Program To Become Debt Free

| Wednesday, May 21, 2008
Designing a debt reduction program can be the best way to solving your financial crisis when you are in a lot of debt. Debt and the interest rates attached to each debt makes the balance increase at fast rate.

This is especially true when you either pay only the monthly minimum. If you ever want to become debt free a debt reduction program is critical to make debts disappear.

But taking out a debt reduction consolidation loan to cover the entire amount of your debts may be out of the question.

First, you need to take some time to honestly assess your financial position.

To create your own debt reduction program, make a list of all the debts you have together with their minimum monthly payment. Then make a list of all the monthly expenses you have each month.

Remember to include your utilities, grocery bills, subscriptions, insurances plus allowances for
clothing, gifts, travel, entertainment, gas etc.

Add the monthly minimum payment for all of your
existing debts to this amount and then take it from the total amount of your income.
Any money remaining is the disposable income you can use to get yourself out of debt.

Now that you know your present financial position, the way to reduce your debt is to make your disposable income work best for you.

Take a look at your debts. Which ones are the smallest? Which ones have the highest rates of
interest? Which ones are for fixed terms and which ones will go on forever if you do nothing more than pay the minimum monthly payment?

Take out any which are fixed period debts over a pre-determined period of time. This usually means the interest was pre-calculated and added to the cost of the item.

You pay the same amount every month for the 6, 12, 24 or 36 months it takes to clear the debt.
Leave these debts until last because you will gain more by using the extra income to increase the
monthly payments on less fixed debts which have variable interest rates.

Take the debts which are for the lowest amounts and use your disposable income to increase these monthly payments first. Either put all of the extra money onto one debt to pay it off quicker, or spread it out over a few of them.

Once you have paid off one debt, whether because the term of the fixed period loan is complete, or because you have cleared an open-ended debt such as store or credit card debt, use the money that you save to increase the monthly payments on your other debts.

This creates a debt reduction snowball and over time you start to see more debts disappearing and freeing up more money to pay the larger debts off quicker.

If you want to put yourself back in control of your debts and overall financial situation create a
personal debt reduction program and stick to it.