The Best Ways How to Tackle Debt in Five Easy Steps

How to Tackle Debt In Five Easy StepsDebt is something that happens to almost everyone. At some point in life, whether it be student loans, medical bills, or just getting behind, most people find themselves in some sort of debt.

Whether it’s something you can rise above in a month or a devastating event in your life that leaves you struggling for years, you can use some simple tactics to help yourself get out of debt, tackle debt, and to help prevent getting into debt in the future.

How to Tackle Debt

Use Online Bill Pay

Most banks and financial institutions offer you the ability to set up online bill pay. This is a great service that can help you keep track of your finances and ensure that you’ll get all of your bills paid on time.

Essentially, you just choose the companies to which you want to send money, denote how much money per month you want to send it and on which day, and set it. Forgetting to pay your bill is a thing of the past; your bank account will automatically run the bill for you.

Prioritize Your Spending

If you’re struggling with debt, it might be beneficial to live like a minimalist for awhile. Do you need to go to the fast food restaurant each morning for breakfast? How often are you eating out for lunch at work? Look for areas where you can cut expenses for awhile, and scale back on frivolous expenditures.

When you tackle debt, every single dollar counts. It might seem like no big deal to save five dollars a day by taking your lunch, but that can easily amount to a savings of over $100 a month. Look at your savings from a monthly or yearly perspective, and you’ll start to see things in a different light and realize that every savings is a good savings.

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5 Rules Of Financial Discipline: How To Deal With High Cost Lending

The following article is a guest post by Edwin Taivonen. If you would like to write an article for Money Q&A, please visit our Guest Posting Guidelines page.

Should you invest or pay off debt?If you have bad credit or you need money in a rush, you may be forced to deal with high-cost lending. Lenders like this charge high-interest rates because they know their customers have no other options and that they do not have financial discipline. If you are caught in a pricey loan situation, the tips below will help you get through it with minimal difficulties.

5 Rules Of Financial Discipline

Pay More than the Minimums

If you only make minimum payments on your loan, you are going to rack up a lot of interest charges. The sooner you pay down your balance, the more money you will save.

Ideally, you should try making double or even triple payments to cut your long term costs, but even $50 a month will help over time. Do whatever you can to reduce the schedule of the loan so you don’t have to pay an enormous interest rate.

Refinance the Loan

If you have a chance to secure a lower interest rate, do so. Most people who work with high cost lending do so because they have an emergency. Once you get past that emergency, you can focus on finding a good lender that will lower your over all loan costs.

If you have other debts that you are paying on, you might see this as a chance to go through loan consolidation. Then you can have a single payment to deal with every month.

Note that if you are going to refinance, it should be with a different lender. Your current lender will try to convince you to get lower monthly payments, which means he’s extending your loan even further. You’ll be paying it back for eternity by the time you are finished.

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Have You Been Denied Credit? Now What Should You Do?

The following is a guest post by Kostas Chiotis. If you would like to write an article for Money Q&A, please visit our Guest Posting Guidelines page.

Denied Credit?Unless you have perfect credit, you’ve likely been on the receiving end of some of the most difficult words that there are to hear – you’re denied credit. Credit companies have very stringent rules that they follow to determine who they extend credit to. If you’re credit rating is not up to their rigorous par, it’s highly likely that you’ll be forced to rethink your financial strategy. As a smart consumer, being denied credit shouldn’t be the end of the road but instead the beginning of the path to improvement.

Find Out Why You Were Denied Credit

According to the Equal Credit Opportunity Act, creditors are required to inform you as to why your application was rejected. This notice comes in the mail, sent to the address you applied for the credit with. There are a number of different reasons that you could be denied credit for, including:

  • Credit usage too high
  • Too many previous delinquencies
  • Too many lines of credit
  • Little or no credit history
  • Too many credit inquiries

By taking advantage of the information that the credit company provides, you can more easily understand where the problem with your credit is so that you can take action to fix it.

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How to Make the Most of a Debt Consolidation Loan

Make the Most of a Debt Consolidation LoanHave you ever had a debt consolidation loan? Have you ever thought about getting a consolidation loan to clean up some credit cards with high interest rates or to bring several small debts under one monthly payment?

There are a few things that you should consider if you are going to get a debt consolidation loan. I recently wrote a guest post on badcredit.org, “How to Make the Most of a Debt Consolidation Loan“, where I listed the three ways that you can maximize your debt consolidation loan and never get into debt again.

Three Ways to Make the Most of a Debt Consolidation Loan

  1. Look at your spending habits
  2. Don’t shuffle money around
  3. Throw more money at the consolidation loan

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