Friday, July 11, 2008

Focusing Your Financial Wellness Goals


With all the spending you’ll be doing this summer, reducing your debt, or eliminating it, it that’s a a possibility for you is a longer-term goal that makes sense. If you want to begin by tackling your credit card debt, you may lay out the following action steps:
  1. This evening I will gather all of my credit card bills and calculate exactly how much I owe on each cared and at what interest rate.
  2. Tonight I will also check out a reliable website such as Bankrate.com and compare the interest rates on my cards to current rates offered by other credit card companies.
  3. Tomorrow I will call my credit card companies and ask for a reduction in my interest rates.
  4. By the end of the month, I will consolidate my debt-either by transferring my credit card balances to one card with a lower interest rate or by taking out a line of credit to pay all the credit card debt at once.
  5. Every month I will make more than the minimum payment on each card and make the largest payment on the card with the highest interest rate.
  6. When paying for incidental expenses such as clothes, restaurant meals, entertainment and house wares, I will use cash or debit instead of credit.
  7. Once I’ve paid off my credit cards, I will keep one in my wallet for exceptional expenses and cut the rest up.

Every one of these actions steps, taken on its own, may seem too small to have any significant impact on your debt load; however, taken together, these actions can make a huge difference.

Try it today and let me know how you are doing!!

For more financial tips, check out Chapter 8 of The Healthy CEO

2 comments:

Shanell said...

Great advice! Now is the time to really focus on implementing the techniques you have given to create healthy financcial life.

http://tyffanishanell.wexlfinancial.com

Anonymous said...

Vision without action is really just fanatasy. To make a difference you need an action plan to get the result you desire. My book has the "action plan" for these results.
Cheers, The Healthy CEO