There are a lot of people facing debts, for several reasons, and many of them sometimes struggle to make payments every month. If you are one of those people, or if you know someone who may be struggling with debt, in this post, you will find a few tips that can help you make those monthly payments easier and, hopefully, get out of that debt a bit faster.
6 Tricks To Help You Pay Off Your Debt Faster
- Don’t stick to the minimum payments
- Try the debt snowball method
- OR the debt Avalanche method
- Declutter and sell items you don’t need
- Find a way to increase your income
- Take it one step at a time
1. Don’t stick to the minimum payments
Whenever you can, pay more than the minimum amount required for the debt monthly payments.
This way you are somewhat decreasing the amount of time it will take you to pay off the debt and simultaneously helping decrease the amount of money you will pay in interest since the period is becoming shorter.
2. Try the debt snowball method
The debt snowball method which is introduced by Dave Ramsey goes like this:
- List all your debts from the smallest one to the largest.
- Start making extra payments to the smallest one while making minimum payments to the rest.
- Once the smallest one is over, you move to the next on the list and do the same.
This way, you will have more extra money left to add to the bigger debts once you are done with the smaller ones. Read more about this method here.
3. OR the debt Avalanche method
This method tackles debts in a different way:
- You list all your debts from the highest interest rate to the lowest interest rate.
- Start making all the extra payments you can against the debt with highest interest rate while maintaining minimum payments for the rest.
- Once you’re done with the highest interest rate on the list, you move to the next one and do the same.
This way, as you move from the highest interest rate to the lowest, it will get easier for you to get rid of all your debts since you will be making less payments as you progress. Read more about it here.
4. Declutter and sell items you don’t need
Most of us have so much clutter in our houses and things we never use or even forgot we had.
You can go ahead and go on a decluttering spree. Find the items that you don’t use or don’t need any more and try to sell them online or through a garage sale, for example.
The amount of money you make will depend on the quantity and quality of what you will sell, but no matter how much it is, it will still be extra cash that you can put into extra debt payments.
5. Find a way to increase your income
Another way to help get rid of your debt faster is if you can increase your monthly income.
You can do this through a number of different ways.
- Starting with trying to find a part-time job that you can do on the weekends or after your day job. Such as driving an Uber or pet-sitting, for example.
- Or maybe find an online job that you can do from home next to your day job. There are plenty of examples for online jobs that you can check and find one that suits you.
- You can also try to use your skills or any resources you have and create a passive income source for yourself which will help with your debt payments and even after that, providing you with extra income with almost no effort.
You can find other different ideas to increase your income here.
6. Take it one step at a time
One final thing to remember when making changes to your lifestyle is to note that not everyone is able to adapt to change the same way. For example, in a previous post, we discussed a no spend challenge, this may not work out for you the same way it did for others.
The best way to tackle these changes is if you do it gradually, to make sure you are doing a healthy transition for yourself and your family and not just shock yourself into a completely different lifestyle.
By gradually changing one habit after the other, you will be able to grow accustomed into the lifestyle that will help you get out of debt and hopefully keep you from falling into another.
Are you currently facing a debt? If so are you doing any of these tips? Do you know more useful tips that can help someone with their own debt? Let me know in the comments below.
Till next week, happy days!