The problem with being told you need to pay off more than the minimum, or more than you do currently, from your credit card debt each month is where do you find it?
To find an extra £20, £50, £100 or more each month may just seem impossible to you. Your options appear to be to go without some of the things you currently buy – i.e. budget harder or to make more money. It may not seem such a hardship to sell some of those unwanted items, but when they don’t bring enough money and it means considering selling the TV and the sofa then it gets quite depressing. So if you can not make more money selling things, what about earning more money? You could get a part time job which you could go to after that long day at your main job, just to find the tax man takes 50% of it before it ever gets to your card debt! You could start up a little side business selling Mama’s homemade ginger cookie recipe – how much do you think that is going to make? The problem is, most of us think we work hard enough as it is, without having to do yet another job in the little free time we get.
Your credit card debt is no doubt already a big headache to you. Having somebody tell you to change your lifestyle completely, as the only solution to paying off these debts, only serves to make the headache even bigger. The barrier to us achieving our goal comes, not in the issue of the solution, but in the assumption of how we must implement that solution. Let me explain.
PROBLEM: We want to pay off our credit card debt
SOLUTION: To pay off our credit card debt we must pay off more per month than the minimum.
ASSUMPTION: To pay off more from our credit card debt per month than we do currently we must change our lifestyle (generally spend less or earn more)
The solution seems very robust, I don’t know if you have a little miracle up your sleeve, but I cannot see any other way of legitimately paying off a debt other than paying off more each month than the minimum.
But what about the assumption? Well, at first sight that seems pretty robust too. But what if I tell you that with a credit card requiring a minimum payment of £100 per month; which I had been paying at that level for a long time, probably years; I found a way of paying an EXTRA £300 per month off the debt. AND I did not notice any lifestyle change other than having a lot less headaches, and feeling very positive towards my debts. I challenged that assumption, and I won!
Furthermore, after a while everything snowballed, and in less than a year, somehow, and it still astounds me now, I was managing to pay off an EXTRA £900 per month from my credit card debt (by this time I was tackling the really big debts!)
“How is this possible?” I hear you gasp. Well, there is one main thing you need to understand before you can understand the way I challenged the assumption. As humans, we do not generally like negativity. If what we are trying to face – a huge credit card debt; having to spend less; having to work harder; having to sell our belongings – makes us feel negative (and I think that’s enough to make anybody feel negative), then we can tend to want to shut down. It is difficult to get motivated with a massive weight like this on our shoulders. If, however, we feel positive about something, then it is easy to get motivated, and to even make sacrifices.
So, if we can change our mindset from negative to positive towards our debt, then we stand a chance of getting somewhere. I hear you, “how on earth do we do that?” The key is in tiny steps, steps which do not give you any negative feelings and do not effect your lifestyle, but will eventually turn your mindset from negative to positive.
When I was paying an extra £300 per month off my credit card bills, surprisingly enough I did not notice any lifestyle change – and before I started I would have sworn blind I could not have afforded this much extra every month. When I was paying £900 a month extra off my debts I’ll be honest, I did notice it, but by this time my mindset was VERY positive (I’d already cleared three of my cards) and any sacrifices I made I was more than happy with.
So the answer to “Should you be paying more off each month?” is definitely YES – how else will the amount go down? But, to be successful with no pain and big gains, what you need to question is the underlying assumption:
PROBLEM: We want to pay off our credit card debt
SOLUTION: To pay off our credit card debt we must pay off more per month than the minimum.
NEW ASSUMPTION: To successfully pay off more from our credit card debt per month than we do currently we must take small steps which we do not feel negative about, and do not change our lifestyle, until our mindset towards our debt turns to a positive one.
“How to Pay Off Credit Card Debt” shows you a very simple system to achieve this. Give it a go, and start smiling about your debts.
Here’s to success, and a debt free life!
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