Debt can weigh you down, it invades your life and can cause no end of worries and stress.
With the average household owing upwards of £12,800, without mortgages included, debt is very real and can seem impossible to pay off.
However, there are ways to manage your debt and pay it off and have a clean slate afterward.Here are some tips to help you get out of debt and start again.
Manage Your Debt
The first step is to get your debt under control. If you have many payments, it might be easier to pay them all off in one go with a consolidation loan, like the ones found at https://www.debtconsolidationloans.com/find-reliable-debt-consolidation-loan-company/. This process doesn’t clear your debt straight away, but lessens the stress and the interest rate and allows you to make one payment each month rather than multiple.
Another way of managing your debt – particularly if it is a smaller amount – is to contact a debt management charity like https://www.stepchange.org/. You make a single, affordable payment to them each month and they split it between your debtors. However, this way may not be the best for your credit score, so you would have to work to get your good credit back.
Regain Your Credit Score
Start immediately, don’t wait until your debt has been paid off. In fact, paying off your debt in time will help your credit score. Make sure you’re paying your bills on time. If you can’t quite afford to pay something all in one go, like your car insurance, then break into down into monthly payments.
Pay for big things you can afford on your credit card, like flight tickets, and immediately pay it off. This helps your credit both at the bank and with your credit card provider. Plus some credit cards come with extras like flight miles, so you build up your money off without getting into more debt.
Cancel Any Unnecessary Subscriptions
Look at your outgoings and see which bills aren’t necessary, can you cancel your gym membership, or find a cheaper one? Can you simplify your TV package by removing sports out of season, or movies and just use pay-per-view? You may find that you’re paying for something you haven’t thought of for years, like a magazine subscription.
Saving money doesn’t have to mean you can’t have luxuries, it just means moderating what you can spend on. Start switching take-away night for a new recipe night, or a cinema trip to a home movie night.
Lose Contact With Credit Cards
When you have paid off and finished with debt, then say goodbye to those credit cards. If you want to keep one for the flight miles, then do, but be 100% sure that you won’t dip into temptation. Even give it to someone you trust so that you can’t use it for anything else.
Delete the card details from any online shops you’ve used them in, shred any check books that go with the cards. Obviously, you need to keep some of the paperwork just in case but file them away – out of sight, out of mind.
Your fresh start can now begin.
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