Snowballing Your Debt Into Oblivion

October 11th, 2008 by Matt | Posted in Debt Management

If you’re like me, at one point in your life, you’ve found yourself in more debt than you could reasonably handle.  One of the most popular strategies for getting out of this mess is consulting with a debt consolidation company.  While this is not always necessarily a bad idea, it will negatively affect your credit score for a time, and it won’t always fix your problems in the long-term.  A better solution is often to apply a technique called snowballing.  In the past year, I’ve managed to pay off 3 bills that have been plaguing me for years using this technique.  And I haven’t had to change my lifestyle to do it!  Here is how I’ve applied the technique:

  1. Arrange your bills in order from highest to lowest interest rate
  2. Look at the top 3 bills and choose the one with the lowest balance
  3. Now focus all your efforts (and excess money) on paying this bill off until it has been paid in full
  4. Rinse and Repeat, taking your old monthly payment you were applying to the previous bill, and applying it to the next bill