If you are anything like me then you have a sizable amount of consumer debt. Believe me; I understand just how stressful this can be. The good thing is that there are a number of simple, yet highly effective, things you can do right now to reduce, or even eliminate, your debt.
When it comes to paying down debt, I use two basic debt reduction techniques; the debt snowball and the debt snowflake.
Debt Snowball – This technique has seemingly been around forever but most people are familiar with it due to the popularity of Dave Ramsey. When utilizing this strategy, the goal is to pay down your debt, from the smallest to the largest, without worrying about the interest rate you are being charged. Essentially, you ignore basic mathematics by paying as much as you possibly can each month on your smallest debt while continuing to make the minimum payments on everything else.
Debt Snowflake – The debt snowflake, or snowflaking as it is often called, is generally used in conjunction with the debt snowball. This strategy makes use of any extra money that can be found, or earned, during the month to help pay down the smallest debt faster. One important element when snowflaking is that you should send these payments to your creditors as soon as it is received. This will help ensure that some unforeseen ‘emergency’ does not occur forcing you to spend this money elsewhere.
Since generating ANY additional income often seems like an impossible task, I thought I would share a few ideas on how we find money to snowflake our debt each month.
- Sell Stuff – This is perhaps the easiest, and most difficult, part of the plan. After all, we love our stuff. If we didn’t, we probably would not have bought it in the first place. Basically, we look around the house and find things that we, or our kids, have not used in a while. Just about everything is fair game!
- Do Odd Jobs – While it is certainly no fun adding more ‘work hours’ to my already jammed schedule, I often remind myself that it is not forever. Some people go out and get a second job. I prefer to try and generate extra cash online. A few things that I have done in the past include freelance writing, posting comments for website owners, and installing WordPress (including relevant themes and plugins). You won’t get rich by doing these things but it sure can help reduce your debt if you stay focused.
- Save Pennies – When our first son was born, I started throwing my loose chain into a jar for him every night. I figured that by the time he was old enough to understand money, there would be enough in there to teach him a few of the more basic concepts (give, save, and spend). Since we are trying to reduce our debt, I started my own penny jar. It is amazing how much change you can save when you really try.
These are just a few of the ways we ‘create’ additional income each month to help pay down our debt. If you have not tried snowflaking your debt, I suggest you give it a chance. It truly is a lot of fun once you get started!