Friday, January 3, 2014

Sam's Plan for Killing Debt in 2014 - Step # 1

It is the new year and many people want to get their financial house in order.  This my guidance on killing debt and gaining control of your finances.

Step # 1 - face the music.

This is actually one of the hardest steps of paying off your debt, you (along with your spouse/partner) need to gather up your statements and figure out how much you owe.  Look at your credit card statement, student loan statement, car loan information, other loans, etc.  Find the statements or go online and determine your balance, interest rate, regular payment, term for each loan (I would exclude the mortgage for now).

Create a documents, whatever format works best for you, with each debt listed, the interest rate, the term, and the monthly payment, along with the due date.  We used an Excel spread sheet when we started our debt killing journey in 2007.

1 comment:

Tracy said...

I bought an app for my ipod that lets med input my debt and set up my repayment plan. I can play around with debt snowball and order of extra payments, as well as how much extra I have available to pay. Very useful and keeps me focused on end goals.