Excessive shopping, purchasing gifts for the entire family, acquaintances and friends, eating out and partying…. everything that makes the Christmas season so brighter can actually end up making a big hole in your pocket. Mounting credit card bills and accumulating interest rates wipe away the smiles soon as you waddle to get back your out of control finances in control!

I have penned down some suggestions that may help you to regain balance into your financial as well as personal life. So settle in and sneak a peep.

• The first thing to do when you are knee deep in debt is to face the music. As the post-Christmas credit card bills come rolling in, take stock of the situation. You can draw a table with fields like how many credit cards you have, name of each card, balance on each account, payment due day, the percentage rates for each card, minimum due as well as the APR and reward points earned. Never ignore your debts, as it won’t help you in the long run. So, assess your situation and get in touch with your creditors and explain them your difficulties.

• Set up a detailed personal budget in order to assess the true state of your finances. Identify each and every source of income you have. Then, include all your expenses. Include the periodic expenses too, such as taxes or the insurance premiums that you may not think about every day. Try making realistic targets, the ones you can implement. Don’t forget to budget for the unexpected things in life…so an emergency fund is a must. An emergency fund should equal to almost three to six months worth of your basic living expenses….and if you don’t have such a fund then you re surely living on the edge.

• Once you have allocated money to your emergency savings, move on to tackle your priority debts first. From your lined up bills, get hold of the debt that has the highest interest rate. As interest gets accrued pretty fast so try to get rid of the highest rated debt first. Keep making payments for the debt month to month; once you’re done, head towards the next highest interest rate account.

Paying off your debts is certainly not an easy thing to do but is not unattainable too. If you have discipline, consistency, and patience then it isn’t impossible to say bye bye to all those stacking bills .

This entry was posted on Tuesday, December 11th, 2007 at 3:06 pm and is filed under Uncategorized. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.