Many Florida residents are burdened with high level of credit card debt. Living with excessive debt is stressful, but many people simply do not know how to begin to tackle debt reduction. The following tips are offered as a guideline for anyone who is ready to begin the process of emerging from beneath a mountain of credit card debt.
The first step is to make a comprehensive assessment of one’s financial standing. Determine if monthly expenditures exceed income. By creating a working budget that contains all of the necessary expenses, it becomes easy to see where any extra money is going, and make the appropriate adjustments.
The next part of the process is to make spending cuts wherever possible. For some individuals, utility bills and home services such as cable television and phone plans can be trimmed, leaving more room in one’s budget for debt repayment. In other cases, entertainment is the biggest use of discretionary income, and slight changes in the way one approaches recreation can make a big difference in the bottom line.
Once room has been made within the budget, additional money can be put toward one’s credit card debt service. However, for some Florida residents, their existing level of debt has simply surpassed their ability to repay those obligations, no matter how aggressively budget cuts are implemented. In such cases, it may be time to explore the benefits offered by a personal bankruptcy filing, which can lead to the elimination of many forms of unsecured consumer debt.
Source: money.usnews.com, “5 Ways to Reduce Your Credit Card Debt Starting Now,” David Bakke, May 31, 2013
