Transcripts

Shannon Plate:
For me what it comes down to is the freedom to spend the money that you have worked so hard to earn, because if you're in debt you lost that freedom.

Consumer finance specialist, Shannon Plate, author of the book, Degunking Your Personal Finances…

You get your check every other Friday just like everybody else but it's already promised, it's gone.

The first step to getting out of debt is to stop adding to it and finding ways to pay more than the minimum payments.

No matter what your credit card balance is, if all you pay is the minimum, it will take about thirty years to pay it off. I don't care if the balance is $1,000 or $50,000 the credit cards have that down to a nice formula to keep you in debt as long as humanly possible, most of that money going to interest and not principle.

Shannon says a great strategy to increase the principle payments on your credit cards is…

Beat the credit card companies at their own games, so if you get the things in the mail that say transfer this card for zero percent for twelve months, do it. I mean, make sure there's no huge charges involved making that transfer, but if you can pay zero percent interest on this debt for a year, all of the money that you've been putting towards it can go now go to principle instead of interest.

Tomorrow, more painless strategies to get out of debt, I'm Mike Carruthers and that's Something You Should Know.