Thursday, April 12, 2007

Pay Off Bills Fast

When you get more bills than fun stuff in the mail everyday, you know you may finally hit that point where things get overwhelming. The bills keep coming, and there may not be enough money coming in. You need to pay off bills fast without losing your sanity.

If you want to pay off bills fast and don't have any extra money coming in, you'll need to put a lot of focus and effort into a debt payoff plan. There are debt consolidation services available at no cost to you, but you can work to pay off your debts on your own too.

First, call all of your credit card companies. What you want to do is talk them into lowering your interest rates. Most times, it's the high interest rate which prevents us from paying off credit card debt. If you only pay the minimum payment, you may be paying mainly interest and very little of your actual credit card balance.

Talking your credit card company into lowering your debt is not hard. Most companies will want to work with you, because the alternative is that they may not get any money at all. If you can't reason with them, then you may need to threaten to take your balance elsewhere. Credit card companies are always competing for your business, and most will offer you a low rate for a specific trial period.

After you've lowered your interest rates, get a notebook and all of your bills. You'll want to list your bills in order of smallest to largest and then list the minimum monthly payment next to each balance.

You're going to start paying off your bills by paying off the smallest amount first, and then adding that monthly payment with the next largest bill until that one is paid off. If you pay a total of $1000 a month for your outstanding balances, you will continue to pay a total of $1000 until all of your bills are paid off. This is what's called a debt snowball. You keep combining your monthly payments until you're debt free!

To pay off bills fast, you'll need a lot of focus and a solid plan. If you feel too overwhelmed, call a debt consolidation service to walk you through the process.

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