This seems to be a common theme here, so I thought it might be nice to start a thread that we could have for reference. Put any and all "getting out of debt" advice here - let's help all our members get out of the red and back in the black!


First of all, make sure you're able to live within your means. Otherwise, you'll be digging yourself deeper and deeper each month. Take your net take home pay and subtract your monthly expenses. You may find that your expenses exceed what you're bringing in. If that's the case, you'll have to make a decision: to either reduce your expenses or increase your income, or both.

Figure out as many ways to cut corners as you can. Mommysavers is the place to get tons of ideas.


Know what rates you're paying on all of your bills and credit cards. It doesn't hurt to call the lender to try to negotiate lower rates. Or, you can even try to roll balances from higher rate card into a lower-interest rate credit card if possible. Make sure you're paying the minimums on all cards and put whatever is left over towards the balance on the higher rate cards.


Automate the process as much as possible so you're not having to dwell on your debt. Do the baby steps each day, week, and month to whittle away at it. As long as you're doing that, the debt will take care of itself in time and you won't have to think about it. Focus on the positive steps you're taking to empower yourself financially. Feel good about living on less money, and feel proud each time you write out a check to pay off your debt.

Once your debt it paid off use whatever is left over to start building wealth. Having a nice financial cushion does wonders for your own peace of mind. It's worth more than anything you could charge to a credit card.

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First and most importantly: Go to your library and check out Dave Ramsey Total Money Makeover

Stop spending! Stay out of stores like Target, try to avoid your problem stores! It's easier than you think to cut weekly Target trips down to once a month and it saves a ton!

If you are getting personal things like manicures/pedicures/hair done, etc. Either scale back how often you do it, find it cheaper or do it yourself. You can buy mani/pedi products to do it yourself at home for about the price of one! Get a nice quality kit for the males in your household and learn to use it to give them nice cuts at home.

Shop at Costco types of places to save money. And/or buy generic items when possible.

Put your credit cards in a safe or as some do in the freezer. If you can't afford it with cash then don't buy it!

Follow Dave Ramsey's guide for the cash envelope system, it's the easiest way to dramatically cut your spending.

Take a look at every monthly/yearly payment you have and find a way to scale it back. IE lessen your cable package, get only the sunday paper not all week, cut the home phone bill either use your cell or get vonage type of service, get new quotes for insurance providers, up your deductible to lower your payment, etc

If you eat out often, buy nicer food at the grocery store, it's still cheaper than a restaurant but you get the fancy taste. Buy rolls or garlic bread, etc to go with the meals. If you mainly eat out for time purposes not food value, then learn to use the crockpot!

Your grocery budget is the easiest to cut, take a look at what you are buying and make more from scratch meals

Put every penny you can save by these methods towards your debt, largest interested rate cc first!

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A woman is like a teabag. You never know how strong she is until she gets into hot water.-Eleanor Roosevelt

Good advice, Kim.

My biggest getting out of debt tip was a simple one. Stop shopping! The balances cannot go down when your adding to them, even a little bit. For me, it was online shopping. For fun, I would check out the bargan alerts and clearance sales. They ALWAYS have awesome sales somewhere. I had to convince myself that I didn't have to have them all just because they were good deals. If I didn't actually need the item (need, not want), then I shouldn't buy it.

Also, I know that I can not just walk around stores for fun. I am drawn to clearance racks there too. It works better for me to stay out of department stores, even if I have to pay a few cents more for an item at my regular grocery store.

We figured out how much money we have left over at the end of the month. We took most of that and put it towards our smallest debt, while still paying on our other debts. Once that small debt was paid, we put that extra money towards the next smallest debt and so on. Whenever we get extra money, like a tax refund, we put it towards our debt. I know it doesn't sound like fun, but it is making our lives less stressful knowing that we will be out of debt soon. We have paid off two credit cards, two personal loans from our parents, and our medical debt since the beginning of the year by doing this. I know some suggest paying off the highest interest debts first, but it feels like you are accomplishing something when you get things paid off.

Stacia has the right idea you geuinly need to eliminate the excess spending. Which can be hard when you are in a society where everyone spends, spends spends.

You need to try and have the best interest rates you can get. It is the interest that kills you. We have a 0% intro rate. We are not able to pay it off but we have good enough credit to transfer the debt to a new card and have a 0% interest rate for a while. Then if we need to we will consider borrowing from parents rather then paying interest.

We plan to do the debt snowball thing and just keep putting all our extra money into debt. Our budget and many others get easier to handle once the CCs and the car payment is paid off.

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Kimberly Proud Mommy to Bethany Rose April 2006 &

Organizer of the Coupon Clippers of Tacoma

Yes it is all about unneeded spending. We always paid extra $100 a month on our house payment because we had the extra money. We would save lots of $$ in savings and then when we reached an extra $10,000 we would apply it directly to our principal on our loan until we paid off our house loan in 10 years instead of 30 years.

If we use credit cards they are paid off every month. I would suggest DAve Ramsay's also for people who dont know where to start or arent MOTIVATED at all to SAVE or BUDGET.

I am also a big Dave Ramsey fan.

I suggest following his Baby Steps which start with saving a $1,000 Baby Emergency fund, then paying off all debts (except the home mortgage, which comes later), then saving 3 to 6 months of living expenses.

When paying off your debts I also like the "debt snowball" method described above. There is a great site that has an excellent debt snowball calculator where you can enter your debt balance, interest rates, and monthly amount you will be paying and it will show you exactly how long it will take you to pay them all off. It is called What's The Cost.

I'm a newbie here. Looking forward to getting to know you all!

- Jennifer

Visit Mary Hunt's website (Debt Proof Living) at:
Debt-Proof Living Home

Then, under the about us menu, click on cheapskate?!

It's a short paragraph or so, but you'll know right away, if you agree with this program or not.
If like me you liked what you read, click "New to DPL" START HERE icon (top right) and enjoy and by the way make sure you sign up for the free e-mail.
Best money advice I have ever rcvd and it's FREE!

I did subscribe for 2 years to Mary's program and it was worth every penny, and now only get the free newsletter because I feel that I'm on track and have the basics I need to go forward.

I think it was like $24 for 2 years, only 1 a month, not bad! And I love the calculators!:happy dance:

If you have creditors demanding payments, deal with them realistically. Contact your creditors and let them know you're having difficulty making your payments. If you have had a temporary financial setback, explain it. Try to work out a payment schedule with your creditors. Most are willing to work with you and will appreciate your honesty, but they will want regular payments.

The Fair Debt Collection Practices Law prohibits a debt collector from telling anyone but your attorney how much you owe, harassing or threatening you, using false statements, giving false information about you to anyone, and misrepresenting the legal status of your debts. Under federal debt-collection laws, creditors cannot seize most government assistance and can only garnish a portion of wages to collect debts.

we refianced the house took out more to pay off the credit card lower intrest in mortgage than credit card and our house payment is still cheaper than before we refianced. Somehow my husband got the bank to do it for free. We also for a couple of months took every penny left over and got rid of those little debts. It was the hardest thing we ever did but now it is habit .And we save more now, I don't know about you guys but we got into debt not because we spent because we didn't have a savings for emergencies. One year every month there was some big thing that happened kids in hospital deaths of loved ones and no savings, we had to use the credit card.