Debt Advice Trust Blog

Getting into debt can happen for a whole variety of reasons: ill health, redundancy, relationship breakdowns, the list is endless. What’s important though is that you face up to the situation and acknowledge that the debt or debts are for real, that they won’t disappear of their own accord and need resolving. From this position of financial reality you can start to address the problems, deal with them and start to regain control over your finances.

Here are five essential strategies for debt management that will help you at least get to grips with the situation and offer you a chance of tacking it.

1. Understand your debt.
   How much do you owe and to whom do you owe it? Take stock and list all you owe and where. Hard as it this might be, actualising what you owe will make tackling it much easier in the long run.
2. Talk to your creditors and make manageable repayment arrangements. 
   Ask for improved terms as part of your debt management. You never know what you will be able to negotiate and even a small saving helps.
3. Understand your outgoings.
   Make a note of everything you are committed to spending over a month. Use this information to identify where the money is earmarked. Once you identify what is essential you can cut out the non-essentials.
4. Prioritise your debt.
   It’s likely some of your debt will be costing you more than other aspects of your debt – credit cards, for example, are one of the most expensive forms of debt. Identify the most expensive debt and deal with it as a priority.
5. Cut up your credit cards and cut out the mindless spending.
   Credit cards are too tempting and too expensive. Yes a non credit card existence is less convenient, but convenience costs. You’re already in debt – don’t add to it.

Talk to an independent and impartial debt advice agency today, for more information on how to take back control of your finances.

Tags: credit cards, Debt advice, Debt management

This entry was posted on Thursday, October 8th, 2009 at 3:10 pm and is filed under Debt management. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.