April 15, 2006 | Episode 15
Host Rob Keefe gets sound financial advice from Real Simple's Robin Domeniconi
Real Simple Television Productions Inc.
PBS.ORG EXTRA
Five Steps to Getting Out of Credit-Card Debt
Expert instructions for paying your dues
1. Examine your habits.
“Most people think the first thing they need to do is set a budget,”
says Deborah McNaughton, the founder and president of Professional
Credit Counselors and the author of The Get Out of Debt Kit: Your
Guide to Total Financial Freedom
(Kaplan, $19). “But they can’t set a budget until they know how much
they’re spending.” To that end, she recommends first taking a month to
keep a journal in which you keep track of every purchase — including
rent, food, clothing, gas, bills, lattes — right down to the last
penny. Once you see what your spending habits are, you’ll see where you
can cut back.
When you sit down to determine your new
budget, be sure to count everything. “People forget what I call ‘budget
busters,’” McNaughton cautions, “like insurance, car repairs, taxes —
things that are not a monthly expense.” To avoid the inevitable
end-of-year scrambling that happens if you forget to consider these
items, she recommends figuring out how much you spend on, say, taxes
for the whole year, then dividing that by 12. Then each month, save a
piece of what you’ll need at the end of the year.
2. Examine your debt.
Next, it’s time to figure out what you owe. “Get all your bills together for one month, sit down at the kitchen table, and analyze them one by one,” says Howard S. Dvorkin, the founder of Consolidated Credit Counseling Services (www.consolidatedcredit.org) and the author of Credit Hell: How to Dig Out of Debt (John Wiley & Sons, $20). “Essentially, [that means] listing every debt you have, how much you owe, how much your minimum payment is, how much your interest is, and what the balance is.”
3. Determine your options for tackling the debt.
Is borrowing money from family a possibility? Should you refinance
your house? Can you consolidate your credit-card bills? These are just
some of the questions to ask when determining the best way to solve
your debt problems. Making matters even more complicated is the fact
that no two debt situations are alike. “Refinancing the mortgage may be
a good bit of advice, but if you don’t have any equity in the house,
that’s a useless suggestion,” Dvorkin notes of generalizations. “These
types of things need to be addressed, and having a credit counselor go
through them is the best way I know to get that advice.” The nonprofit
Financial Planning Association is a good place to start your search for
a qualified CFP in your area (www.fpanet.org/public).
Keep in mind, though, that even among experts, opinions vary. For
instance, when it comes to credit-card debt, McNaughton explains, “some
experts say to pay the highest-interest-rate balance off first, and
some say pay the lower balances off first. I say the lower, because
most people become discouraged when they’re not seeing things happen
quick enough. I like gold stars. I like to see progress being made.”
Clearly, finding the right plan for your personal situation and
spending style is key to your success.
4. Put your plan into action.
Once you’ve found your plan, execute it. “You need to pull the trigger and do all that’s necessary to make that option successful,” Dvorkin says. For instance, McNaughton recommends always paying more than the least monthly amount due. “The idea is to pay at least double the minimum,” she says. “A $2,000 debt would take about 16 1/2 years to pay off and [would cost] $2,500 in finance charges if you just paid the minimum and never charged again. If you paid an extra $5 on that example, it would knock off five years. An extra $10 would knock off eight years.”
5. Review, review, review.
A maintenance plan is essential to keeping yourself debt-free. In
financial terms, that means reviewing both your budget and your
debt-solving plan every month, and avoiding the habits that landed you
in the hole in the first place. “If you use a credit card, pay it off
that month,” Dvorkin instructs. “If you start adding on debt again,
you’re going to be in the same shape, maybe worse.”
Once
your debt is liquidated, McNaughton recommends keeping a close watch on
your credit. “After a person has paid off debt, I recommend they get a
copy of their credit report, to make sure the agencies have reported
that all their accounts have been paid off,” she says, noting that
consumers are entitled to a free report from each of the three credit
unions (Equifax, Experian, and TransUnion) every year.
Equally important to the maintenance plan, says Dvorkin, is “training
yourself to live on less.” Most of us can trim 15 percent of our
monthly spending and not even feel it, he says: “You won’t even notice,
I’m telling you. Do you really need that Starbucks, or can you drink
the coffee in your office? No. You can cut back a little and not even
notice.”
Expert-Recommended Resources
• The Get Out of Debt Kit: Your Guide to Total Financial Freedom,
by Deborah McNaughton
• McNaughton’s Professional Credit Counselors Inc., www.financialvictory.com
• Credit Hell: How to Dig Out of Debt, by Howard S. Dvorkin
• Dvorkin’s Consolidated Credit Counseling Services, www.consolidatedcredit.org
• Green With Envy: Why Keeping Up With the Joneses Is Keeping Us
in
Debt (Warner Books, $25), by Shira Boss
• www.jumpstart.org
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