Complete Guide To Getting Help With Credit Card Debt

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1 Get your spending under control

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If you’ve realised you need help with your credit card debt you need to ensure it doesn’t get worse however, depending on your mindset, it’s not always that easy! Here’s my complete guide to getting help with your credit card debt and how to get it paid off sooner rather than later.

Get your spending under control

If you think you have a genuine spending problem you may want to seek some professional help but if you’re looking for help with your credit card debt due to regular annual events & other unavoidable things that just keep adding to the top of the pile that may well include:

Christmas
Birthdays
Summer Holidays
Car repairs/maintenance
Emergency household repairs

Stop using the credit card!

If you haven’t the physical cash in your hand to spend, don’t spend it! It might seem hard right now but if you are looking for ways to watch the pennies at Christmas, weddings or even check the posts out below.

Consider a no spend challenge?

I have a complete guide on how to conduct your no spend challenge which helps massively with not only saving money but also your money mindset too!

If you feel you have to buy a gift for someone put a max amount on it. You don’t have to spend £50 on a birthday present if you’ve physically only got £20. The person you are buying for I’m sure would much rather know you are putting that £30 towards your credit card debt than spending money on them!

Get Home Emergency Cover

I’ve wrote a post on adding home emergency cover onto my home insurance for as little as £20 per YEAR so why not ask to see if you can add something on to your?

Although a lot of the household emergencies are covered in this as far as your electrics, plumbing and heating are concerned; if there are some household repairs that you need to do but maybe aren’t necessarily classed as an emergency look at where you can save some cash when it comes round to it but if it doesn’t NEED doing don’t do it.

Decide How You Want To Pay It Off

There are two lines of thought in approaching how you should pay off your credit card debt. Both are referred to as being the snowball method. Snowball means you start small and end up on a roll, making bigger payments.

The first method is widely approved by financial experts. It involves you going through that list of credit card debt that you’ve created and listing it in order of highest to lowest interest rate so for example:

Barclaycard could be at 29.99%
American Express at 15%
Sainsburys at 0%

This means you ought to really pay off the card with the highest interest rate first, which saves you money in the long run because you’re no longer paying that high rate. This is sound advice, but depending on your current mindset, there’s another train of thought you might want to consider.

This time list your debt in order from smallest amount owed on your credit cards to largest amount owed and aim to pay the lowest off first. The idea here is that you’ll find it very motivating to see a credit card paid off in full – and that frees up a minimum payment that you then apply to the next smallest credit card in your list.

Both ideas are good but only you can decide which approach would better suit you. If you want to cheer yourself on and celebrate each milestone, then the second option might work better for you.

If finances are of utmost importance and you want to pay the least possible back in the longrun, then you might want the first option. You can still celebrate the money you’re saving in interest but pick a plan and then work it.

Credit Card Consolidation

What does it mean to consolidate my credit cards?

Basically, when you consolidate your credit cards, you are replacing several individual debts with one larger loan.

The common method of consolidating credit card debt is to transfer the balances of multiple credit cards to a new one.

Why would I want to consolidate my credit cards?

To save money! But how I hear you say? I still need to pay it back right? Yep you do (unfortunately!) but some credit card providers sometimes offer low introductory interest rates or special deals on balance transfers, meaning you might end up paying less. I transferred a small balance I had on a to an 18 month 0% interest card that although I still have to pay at least the minimum payment every month I have already saved on the interest I would’ve been charged if I had stayed with my old provider.

If you choose to shift your credit card to make it easier to pay back or save money, it’s very important that you don’t spend any more on the card. As we’ve already mentioned if you do keep spending your situation will only get worse. If by consolidating your credit cards you find can also pay more than the minimum then do so!

If you have a persistent credit card debt, please consider all of your options and get free and confidential debt advice before committing to something like debt consolidation.

Create a budget

Knowing exactly what you have coming into the household every month vs what goes out will play a massive part in realising whether or not you have the ability to pay off your credit card debt quicker than ever.

You want to ensure you’re spending less than you earn. Just as you listed your debt so that you could see it all spelled out for you, you now have to do the same with your family money.

Write down what you earn and what your partner earns. Pool all sources, including child support and any benefits you have coming in and add everything up!

You want to make sure everything is included from school fees/dinners, activities, utility bills, loans, car maintenance, birthday parties, Christmas, and fun things you do as a family too. Going back through past statements to see what you’ve spent on discretionary items may even open your eyes to things you can see you really need to stop spending on!

You’re going to want to start building up a bit of a buffer or an emergency fund too so ideally you really don’t want to make arrangements to spend every last penny you earn. Otherwise you’ll be back where you started should an emergency crop up that you cannot afford to pay cash for.

If you realise that you have too many bills all piling up at one time of the month, you can contact your provider or lender and ask for a new due date or billing cycle. This can really help if you and your spouse get paid twice monthly, or weekly rather than one monthly payment the same time as everything else leaves your account too.

As you start to get debt paid off, it’s super important that you update your monthly budget to adjust for things you’ve paid off or paid down – or when you have more money coming in. Don’t let it get swallowed up in everything else!

Get Rid of unnecessary expenditure

A no spend challenge is really good at letting you see the necessities in life as far as what you spend your money on is concerned.

For example, do you really need to buy the newspaper every day? Can you go online and read the news or watch it on TV instead? How about bottled water – is it a luxury you can do without temporarily?

Do you have a landline and a mobile phone bill? Would it be possible to get rid of your landline phone service and just go with a mobile phone for the time being? If so, that’s one less payment each month.

Sky is a BIIIIIIG budget buster for so many people but realistically its a massively luxury! You might spend £80 per month getting tons of movie channels and special packages for sports and entertainment but do you really NEED that much access to television programmes? Can you cut back to a basic plan? If you need to, invest in a Netflix or Now TV account for much less than you would Sky.

If you can bundle things to save money, do it. For example, you might have your phone, Sky and Internet service all with different companies. You can save money by bundling it with one provider. We personally can’t because of the location we live in but a lot of peo0ple around the UK can do exactly that.

Earn more!

One way to pay off your credit card debt quicker is to earn more money than what goes out!

If only it was that simple right.. but to be fair there are so many more ways these days in which you can earn some extra cash from home, online or what a lot of people like to call ‘side hustling’ in getting another job!

I have tons of ideas on here alone of things you can do to earn a bit of money from your hobby, your skills even selling things on eBay so be sure to check them out!

When you pay off your debt, you might find it hard to see all of that ‘available credit’ but try to resist the urge to charge your cards up again. You’ve come so far and as I’ve already touched on; a better way would be to save up the cash and spend it that way.

I really hope this post gives you everything you need and more with regards to needing some help with credit card debt. If you do need any help with your debt or would like some debt advice then be sure to check out the Step Change Debt Charity.

Feel free to PIN to read again later!

The Money Saving Mum

Complete Guide To Getting Help With Credit Card Debt