My Debt Relief Plan

How to Pay Off Credit Card Bills

When we look at the question above no one thinks thats easy I write a check or I will make a direct transfer from my bank then they will all be paid. Almost everyone who looks at this question is looking for a way to pay off credit card bills in their entirety and become completely credit card debt free.

Ways to pay off credit card bills are easy to come by if you are prepared to make a few sacrifices in order to make extra payments. There is no magic formula to getting your finances fixed immediately unless you have a winning lottery ticket that you haven’t bothered to cash in yet, or you have an inheritance that is just about to be transfered over to you. In most cases neither of these are going to happen.

So here are a few tips on how to start reducing your monthly outgoings in order to pay off credit card bills faster than you would if you were just paying off the minimum each month. To start with you need to take a serious look at how much you have going out each month compared to that what you have coming in but if you are seriously looking to pay off credit card bills then you have probably already done this and you are going to be well on your way to the next step.

Because you have worked out exactly how much you are paying out and where you are paying that money to then the next step is easy. Look at what is a complete and exact essential payment each month. For example if you are filling up your car with gas 5 times a month do you need to be making those trips each day? If you don’t need to be making the trips, can you walk or is there a way you can pool with someone else? Are your children being dropped off at the school gate when school is only 5 blocks away, walk it is going to be cheaper for you and healthier for both you and the children.

I love to grab a coffee first thing in the morning and on my walk into my office I love to have a steaming coffee in my hand. When I went through the motions to pay off credit card bills I went to the extreme of giving up my morning coffee, ok ok you got me I didn’t but I did stop getting it from Starbucks and went out and purchased a stay hot cup, you know the metallic ones that stay hot forever, and a milk whisk and I make the coffee for myself, before I walk the children to school and then make my way into work. I was spending $3.75 a morning getting my coffee, average month is 4 weeks 5 days in each working week is 20 days, that works out at a massive $75 a month more to pay off credit card bills! Now obviously you have to buy the ingredients yourself and you have to initially pay out for the mug and the whisk, but you will find that you are still $50 a month better off using this method.

Now the extra money that you save in doing the two tips above doesn’t mean that you have extra money to spend on other things but you do have extra money to pay off credit card bills and it is important that in your savings you are making each month you ensure that those savings go off your credit card bills.

Add comment August 1st, 2007

Credit Repair Information

Credit repair has become a necessary part of today’s life as more and more people fall victim to bad credit. Credit repair takes time, however, and should never be viewed as a “quick fix” for your credit. Credit repair is a million dollar industry with a lot of scams. If you decide to respond to a credit repair offer, look for these tell-tale signs of a scam: companies that want you to pay for credit repair services before they provide any services.

Under the Credit Repair Organizations Act, credit repair companies cannot require you to pay until they have completed the services they have promised. For example, a credit repair company cannot: make false claims about their services charge you until they have completed the promised services perform any services until they have your signature on a written contract and have completed a three-day waiting period. Many states have laws regulating credit repair companies. If youve had a problem with a credit repair company, dont be embarrassed to report it.

Don’t pay money upfront for credit repair services. It’s against the law for a company to require payment before the promised credit repair services have actually been performed. If the services are offered through an interstate phone call, the federal Telemarketing Sales Rule says that the company cannot ask for payment until it has provided you with proof of the promised results by giving you with a copy of your credit report that has been issued by a credit bureau more than six months after the corrections were made.

Depending on your time, patience, perseverance, and complexity of your case, you can successfully dispute inaccurate credit report items on your own. However, credit bureaus strategies and tactics make the process often time-consuming, overly-burdensome and ineffective for the consumer.

Add comment August 1st, 2007