Personal Finance

Credit cards and common sense aren’t two terms that you usually find in the same sentence nowadays. We’ve gone through a period in our economic history recently where credit card companies have been very successful at convincing us that it is quite right and proper to use our credit cards for just about everything. And even though common sense would tell us that’s not the case, we bought into that fiction and now a lot of us are facing some very serious debt.

So if we’re going to find a credit card debt solution and climb back up to the light of solvency, we have to relearn common sense. We should begin by curtailing or completely shutting down our credit card spending. After all, how many things do we need to buy on time and have today that can’t wait until we’ve saved up the money for them? Will our lives really change dramatically if we postpone some of our purchases?

Of course, the answer is no. Most of us didn’t fall into the credit card debt abyss by buying only things we absolutely had to have. We fell in because we were sloppy and poorly disciplined. We bought things we truly couldn’t afford and didn’t think twice about it because it didn’t add much to our minimum payments. Then, after a late payment or two followed by a rate hike and a jump in those minimum payments we began to pay attention. For some, that was too little too late.

So if we can stop the credit card buying cycle we can begin to eliminate credit card debt. Then, if we can add a little more discipline to our spending we can begin to pay down our balances. Just think how freeing it would be if we had no credit card balances at all. Just think what we could do with the money we’re sending off to the credit card companies every month. For a lot of us it’s going to be a long road back, but it’s a necessary and worthwhile trip.