How can I pay off my debts faster?
Last Modified 16th of February 2021
Paying off your debts is a fantastic and worthwhile goal to have, but when money is tight it’s not always an easy thing to do. The easiest way to pay off your debts faster is to either find more money by increasing your income or to save more money by cutting your costs. The best solution is to do both if you can!
Increase your income
The obvious way to do this is to pick up overtime, work more shifts or get an additional part time job. Whatever you do it won’t be fun, but if you can put up with the extra work for just a short amount of time you can take a chunk out of your debts.
Working extra hours will have the added benefit of reducing your interest on remaining debts; making it easier to pay off the rest quickly. Additionally, the extra time at work will mean that you go out less and help you save more money.
Decrease your costs
To decrease your costs you can either do small things, such as cancelling your satellite TV, trying to buy cheaper food and not eating out as often, or you can do bigger things such as quitting ciagarettes. Of course what you should do depends on how big your debts are, how fast you are already paying them off and how badly you want to pay them off.
One easy way to save money is by juggling your debt into lower interest accounts. You can leverage balance transfer credit cards or consider taking out a secured loan at a lower rate to consolidate your debts.
Paying off the debt
Ideally you should do all of the above, the more you sacrifice now the sooner you will be debt free. Whatever you do though, you should always endeavour to pay off your highest cost debts first and be careful to ensure that you keep a buffer in your bank account so that you don’t accidentally go overdrawn and cost yourself even more money.
