1. List down all your credit card debts with the outstanding balance, interest rate, minimum payment, payment due date and credit limit for each card. This will give you a broader picture on how much you owe in total.

2. Start making extra payment for the card which contains the lowest balance. This method will definitely serve you to get rid of your debt bills faster.

3. Then start tackling the card which comes with the highest interest rate. At the same time, make minimum payment for the rest of your bills. This will help to reduce your financial burden in the long run.

4. Start talking terms with your banks or credit card providers for lower interest rates. This will help you to pay off your debts faster

5. Plan your monthly budget properly and it is a need for you to cut down some of your unnecessary expenses, especially on luxury items. Save as much money as you can to make more payment for your cards. This will assist you to reduce on your outstanding balances faster.

6. Make sure that you don’t create any additional debt from now onwards. Never apply for new credit cards or new loans until your current debts are clear. Make sure you are prepared enough to stop using your cards for buying products or services.

7. Since you are fully aware of your payment due dates, you are reminded to make your payments on time in order to avoid late bills.

8. If you are currently having a saving account or fixed deposit account, you are advised to recall the money to erase your credit card debts first. In order to reduce the debt amount, you are encouraged to go for debt settlement.

9. When you are facing huge debts, changing your current lifestyle is a must. You are encouraged to take up part time job to generate more income to reduce debt. You are also advised to find ways to save some daily costs.

10. If you are really poor in managing debt, you should consider obtaining professional assistance. Look for reliable financial consultants or debt settlement companies to assist you.

Here are some best methods for credit card debt consolidation.

You can apply for credit card debt consolidation through Internet or by applying to your local creditors. Both secured and unsecured forms of Credit card debt consolidation are available in market to choose from, it will be better to take an unsecured loan because a miss payment may lead you lose your security.

For credit card debt consolidation you should take loan from a single creditor because it is easy to pay to a single creditor than to pay to multiple creditors.

With credit card debt consolidation you can get better rates as your new creditor will offer you easy terms with lower monthly installments and lower interest rates.

You can make your life simple with credit card debt consolidation by paying one bill per month, which will cut a lot of stress and bill paying time.

If you are unable to take credit card debt consolidation loan at your desired low interest rates then you can borrow needed money from your life insurance policy to eliminate credit card debt.

Of course, the best method to consolidate credit card debt is to minimize the use of credit card, which is in debt, and to transfer the balance to a lower or zero interest credit card.

Credit card debt help is usually available for both personal and business debt problems at most financial services.Do not postponing taking care of your credit car debt. You can lose a lot of money!

In that moment, Shivers, then 34, made her decision. She found a credit counselor, cut up all but one of the credit cards and got on a payment plan. Three and a half years later, she paid off the last of the bills.

It’s hard to escape the news that Americans are drowning in personal debt, but you hear less about the many people who, like Inga Shivers, have been able to dig out of debt.

Getting sucked in

The personal-debt problem gets so much attention that it’s surprising to learn that many credit card holders — 40 percent, according to the Federal Reserve — pay their balances in full each month. High-income families typically carry a bigger monthly balance, but they can (and do) regularly pay off a bigger share of their debt, says Christian Weller, senior economist with the Center for American Progress.

People with little income are more likely to be sucked into the vortex of credit card debt, hidden fees and escalating interest rates. That’s because homeowners can transfer credit card debt to lower-rate mortgage lines of credit (rarely a good idea, by the way), but those without a home have to turn to high-interest payday lenders when credit card companies cut them off.

Former debtors have successfully used a wide range of systems, books or programs. For Sarah Maffei, the radical approach was the ticket. She amassed $30,000 in debt, about half of it in student loans, by the time she was 28. Her debt began as soon as she got her first credit cards, at age 18. When she graduated from college, “I must have had about 16 credit cards,” she says, including six major cards and a fistful from department and specialty stores.

Joining the workforce as a benefits professional in San Francisco forced a reckoning: “When you are in college, you keep thinking that you are going to graduate, get this great job, make all this money and you’ll pay it all off.” Instead, she owed $1,000 more than she would earn in a whole year. She was miserable: “You’d pay $30 and $16 of it went to interest. … Every payday, my whole paycheck was gone.”

Saving up for a movie

Maffei heard about Joanne Nagel, a consultant whose system requires an all-cash existence. It was a harsh system — exactly what Maffei wanted. She abstained from credit cards, even from ATMs. She learned to keep records, budget each week in advance, pay herself in cash and suck it up if she ran out of money midway through.

Her budget was Spartan: $39 for groceries, $5 for dry cleaning, $20 for lunches out, $5 for cat food, $5 for gas and $10 for clothing. Recreational shopping was just a memory. Entertainment was “staying home, renting movies, having friends over or going to friends’ houses.” Her recreation budget: “Four one-dollar bills. If want to go to the movies, I have to save up for two weeks. And if I want popcorn, I have to save up more.”

She gravitated toward friends she had formerly disdained as “cheap.” It became kind of fun. For a Christmas party, she splurged two weeks of her clothing allowance on a discount-store dress.

After two and a half years, the whole debt was paid. Today, she still lives almost entirely on cash, planning every category each week on a spreadsheet. Faced with big purchases, she compares the cost with her budget for that category, asking herself, “that’s a week’s worth, or two weeks’ worth — is it worth it?”

She’s a single parent now. While that’s tough, she says, “it’s great to look back and say, ‘Oh, my God, if I could live on that, I can definitely do this.’ … I never thought I could pay off one (bill), let alone all of them.”

Pick your program

Few statistics exist to tell how many debt survivors have paid down big balances and changed their habits, let alone how they did it. There are only reports describing the nation’s mounting load of personal debt. The average card holder had $4,800 in credit card debt in 2007, according to the Census Bureau, a number that’s expected to reach $5,500 in 2008.

A report from the Center for American Progress says:

• The number of American families carrying card balances is growing.

• Credit card debt is growing fastest among middle- and low-income families.

• Low-income families have the greatest debts, proportionate to their incomes.

• Families with higher credit card debt — not overall debt — are more likely to become delinquent on card bills.

Howell Edwards of the nonprofit InCharge Debt Solutions (formerly Profina Debt Solutions) says that about 40% of the roughly 30,000 people who enroll in the company’s debt management program annually complete the program. Of the rest, some file for bankruptcy, others use home equity to shift their debt and a substantial number feel they are able to manage their debt on their own, says Edwards.

5 traits of the debt-free

It is credit cards, with their easily triggered fees, escalating interest rates and hidden costs, that seem to push debt out of control.

Despite the odds, committed debtors manage to cut up cards, pay down balances and foreswear old habits. The system they use, whether a credit counselor or the 12-step self-help group Debtors Anonymous, appears to matter less than their determination to claw their way out. Some ex-debtors say they can’t touch another credit card as long as they live. Others do just fine with credit. Regardless, they all:

• Decide to leave their dream world, add up the damage and assign a cold, hard number to their total debt.

• Stop using unsecured debt — at least until they’ve reached a zero balance, and maybe forever.

• Focus intently — and stay focused — on their system, whatever it is.

• Plan and track where every dime of their money goes.

• Don’t quit until they’re done.

Motivation: Fear

Shivers has advice for people in debt trouble: Get educated. Her trouble began when she left her $89,000-a-year pharmacist career to start a home-based business. Her passion was marketing, so she pulled $30,000 out of her $65,000 savings and launched a direct-mail business.

Although she poured herself into the company, she had no business background, no marketing experience and no education in managing money. Her knowledge was from popular culture. “You read about all these people who started businesses with their credit cards,” she says. After burning through her starting capital, she ran up nine credit cards. “It would be, like, a $5,000 chunk here for a new computer system, $2,000 there for a new printer,” she says. She was shocked to find that she needed $2,000 worth of paper.

She returned to pharmacy work part-time, taking every available shift to support her business. She felt sick with fear over her inability to manage. “I didn’t have a social life at this point. Everybody at my job knew that I was paying off a big debt.” That’s when her colleague stepped in, pointing her to a local affiliate of the National Foundation for Credit Counseling, a national network of nonprofit agencies.

For a $10 monthly fee, the counselor took over, negotiating lower interest rates with most of the card companies. They lowered the 25% interest rate to 15% on her card with a $30,000 balance. They collected $879 a month from her and paid off her bills. She relinquished all the cards but one and took classes on money management and business. She never considered bankruptcy, she says, because, with her lucrative profession, she could pay the debt fairly quickly and maintain her credit rating.

How to spot trouble

Jerrold Mundis, author of “How to Get Out of Debt, Stay Out of Debt, and Live Prosperously,” says it’s easy to know if you’re in trouble: “Ask yourself, are you debts causing you any level of discomfort at all? If they are, it is almost certain that you are having a problem with debt.”

Here are the three suggestions from Mundis, a self-confessed ex-debtor, and others who have successfully paid off catastrophic balances:

• Avoid telemarketing “debt counselors” and for-profit organizations. Find a counselor certified by the National Foundation for Credit Counseling. (Recently the Internal Revenue Service found that 41 of 63 credit-counseling companies it examined were preying on debtors.) Read “The consumer’s guide to credit counseling” to learn more.

• Debt collectors buy uncollected debt from creditors for literally pennies on the dollar. This means there’s room to negotiate with creditors. Watch out: If you get a really big reduction, you may need to file an IRS form 1099 and adjust your taxes. (Read “Make a deal with debt collectors.”)

• Target bills and zap them one by one (while staying current on the others). Choose the smallest bill, post it on the refrigerator and mark the reduced balance with each payment. Celebrate each time you knock off a bill.

Once you get free, debt veterans say, the temptation to slide back into debt can be huge. It was a way of life, after all. As one former debtor says, “Be prepared for emotional ups and downs tied up in money. There is an enormous emotional content to money stuff for a great many people.”

Debt consolidation can be an excellent option when you find your finances getting out of control but before you go out and sign up for a debt consolidation loan there are a number of factors you must take into account.

1) Why are you looking to consolidate debt?

The basic principle of debt consolidation is that you take out a single loan and use that loan to repay all your existing credit card debts, loans and overdrafts.

This normally results in lower payments generally spread over a longer term. Before you proceed with debt consolidation you should first consider whether there is a better alternative.

2) Sell assets to clear your debt

Rather than rescheduling your debts see if there is any way you can repay some or all of your debts yourself. Sell unwanted valuables and other items.

Depending on the item you can sell to dealers, advertise in local classified ads or through Ebay. Sell unwanted books through Amazon. If your debts are very high and you own your own home consider downsizing to release equity.

3) Pay more than the minimum off your credit cards.

If you can pay more than the minimum monthly payments you should seriously consider continuing with your existing credit cards and clear the debts over the next 12 to 18 months.

While it may mean restricting your spending in other areas it will be the cheapest option long term. Of course you may still opt for debt consolidation to make managing your debt easier.

4) There are a number of options when considering debt consolidation:

If you are currently only just managing to pay the minimum monthly payments on your credit cards, or your total credit card debt is increasing each month then debt consolidation may be the right choice.

5) A mortgage or re mortgage

If you own your own home the lowest interest rates are obtainable by taking out a new mortgage to pay off your existing mortgage (if any) plus enough funds to repay you other debts.

If repaying your existing mortgage will result in penalty charges consider a 2nd mortgage with your existing lender. The interest charged will probably be slightly but not significantly higher.

6) Take out a secured loan with another lender

If you have already missed or been late with any payments, and as a result your credit score is too low for your mortgagor, consider a secured loan with another lender.

Secured loans in these circumstances are more expensive and the lenders are quick to repossess your home if you miss payments. Only take this route if you are certain that you can make the repayments.

Depending upon how bad your credit history is, so long as you maintain all your payments for the following 1 to 3 years, you can replace this loan with a mortgage or re mortgage once your credit score improves. There will be penalties however if you repay a secured loan early. Ensure you read the fine print.

7) A loan secured on other assets

If you have an expensive car, boat or plane you will probably be able to obtain finance using these assets as security. The rate of interest will be higher than a loan secured on property. If you do not have property or it is fully mortgaged securing a loan on other assets may be an option.

An unsecured loan

If you do not have property or other assets an unsecured loan is often a possibility. An unsecured loan is usually over a shorter term, normally up to a maximum of 7 years but occasionally longer. As a result the monthly payments will be higher but the debt will reduce quickly.

As the lender has no security your property and assets are less at risk if you default. The lender could, however, send in the bailiffs if they obtain a court order.

Because there is no security expect to pay a higher interest rate, particularly if you have a poor credit history.

9) Don’t forget the credit card option.

If your debts are relatively low and you still have a reasonable credit history applying for another card with a 0% or low interest balance could be an alternative to a debt consolidation loan.

Go for a 0% balance transfer if you can realistically repay all or most of the debts in the 0% balance transfer period. If however, there will still be a substantial debt at the end of the balance transfer period go for a permanently low interest rate.

Be aware there may be a 2 – 3% charge on the balance transfer. To ensure you don’t slip back into debt cut up all your credit cards and close paid off accounts.

10) Check all the options before making a decision.

As you research all the options it will quickly become clear if there is one obvious solution. For many individuals there will be more that one option so it is essential check them all out before makuing a final decision. Go to a range of different lenders and mortgage or loan brokers and obtain the best package for you. Remember you have the final say and just enquiring does not commit you to any course of action.

For a great many people debt consolidation provides an ideal solution to excessive credit card debt. Sorting out debt problems takes a little time, effort and determination. Once you’ve sorted your debts you will find life more enjoyable and relaxing and, with no debt collectors calling or contacting you by post or phone, much less stressful.

Billions of dollars are available, and applying for these funds is simply a matter of finding the debt relief programs that you qualify for and submitting your application. Once approved, your grant check will either be sent to you or the cash may be deposited directly into your account. Because debt relief grants are not loans, applying for for some of this financial aid does not require a credit check, down payment or even a cosigner. Eligibility requirements differs from program to program, but there are government grants and the like that are available for all income levels and many different circumstances.

Depending on the terms of the particular debt relief grant you are approved for, the funds can be used to pay off your credit cards, utility bills and even your home mortgage. Once approved, there are even grants that can be received over and over again.

Here Is the good site for government grants.

Credit card debt is growing every day, with credit cards becoming easier to obtain, consumers balances are on the rise, and people are even using one credit card to pay off another.  Credit card debt is also becoming a problem on college campuses and it is a major factor in a lot of bankruptcy cases, with near $20 billion discharged in chapter 7 bankruptcy cases each year.  It is an outbreak in world but even more so in the western world, most notable in the US.

A debt consolidation loan could help you to consolidate the high debts on your current credit cards to a lower interest rate and probably a lower payment.  Consolidation loans are intended to help consumers pay off their bills and lower debt.  When you have many cards with large amounts of debt and high interest, debt consolidation can be a life saver.

Rates on credit cards vary quite a bit, so a good idea is to know all your rates and try to transfer balances to lower rate cards when ever possible.  It is also possible that consumers can call their creditors and negotiate for lower interest rates, usually it’s best to consolidate the debt at a lower rate when possible.  If you fail to make your monthly payments as agreed, your interest rate will then go to the penalty rate which is usually quite high.

Overwhelming credit card debt is also causing students to be hounded by creditors and in many cases, declaring bankruptcy said Candy Acezedo, director of education at Consumer Credit Counseling Service.  A high debt can also force a student to take a part time or regular job, which often will have a negative effect on their studies.

The best way to stay out of trouble with debt, is to just use your head and don’t spend money you know you will have a hard time paying back. If you are already drowning in debt, there are free credit counseling agencies that can be found here, that will be able to help get you started in the right direction.

Credit card debt can be the source of needless stress in our lives, and has the potential to have a negative impact on your life. Credit card debt is not just a problem in the U.S. it is also increasing in industrialized countries as well. Credit card debt is also a major issue in a large number of consumer bankruptcies. Credit card debt will make it more difficult to live the life that you deserve.

Students

College students are among the most vulnerable to credit card debt. Credit card debt is growing faster among students than in any other part of society. Students are often offered incentives to apply for credit cards, and some requirements are often waived.  With the ability to buy something now and pay for it later can be hard to resist for students, and most are already struggling financially.  The Public Interest Research Group’s – “PIRG” Student Credit Card Trap study in 1998 found that most students who received credit a credit card from campus tables had higher unpaid balances than other students who received the credit cards elsewhere and were more likely to roll over their balance from  month to month.

Interest

Credit card companies have started to take an interest in educating credit card users because knowledgeable consumers are much less likely to be overwhelmed by debt, leaving them in a much better position to make their payments on-time and avoid getting bad credit and even bankruptcy. If your already overwhelmed by credit card debt, consider a debt consolidation loan, so instead of having a lot of high interest credit card bills due, you now will have one bill that is due once a month usually at a lower rate. Consolidating credit card debt can be as simple as contacting one of the many credit counseling agencies on the web. According to the Consumer Action, (a public interest organization) who does a survey once a year of over one hundred credit card companies, card holders can be hit with late fees of up to $39 and raised interest rates.

The increase in credit card debt is rising at an alarming rate. Some popular economists are predicting that the rise in credit debt is likely to continue. Many people do not realize how debilitating credit card debt can be to their lives.

REDUCE YOUR DEBT AND START MAKING MONEY !