Credit Cards

How to Reduce your Credit Card Bill

Many of us have credit cards and most of us repay the full balance each month in full. However, there are those who only pay off the minimum balance or pay off less than the full balance each month. By doing this they are paying interest on the money that they are borrowing and this can really add up to make the credit card quite expensive. Therefore it can be worth considering ways to reduce the cost of the card, which will mean reducing the debt on the card.

Stop using the card

The first sensible thing to do is to stop using the card for a while. If you keep spending money on it, then the debt will grow rather than reduce. Therefore try to find other ways to pay for things. You may have a debit card you can use or you could use cash. You could even take out a quick loan. Leave the card at home when you go out shopping so that you remember not to use it. You may want the security of using a credit card if you shop online, but you could get the same security if you used a Paypal account and paid through your debit card.

Buy less items

It is a good idea to try to buy less while you are trying to pay back some of the debt. Think about each item that you are buying and consider whether it is something that you really need or not. It may be that you can wait a while for the item and for now save money to pay off debt rather than buying the item. If you get into the habit of doing this with every item that you buy then you should end up saving quite a bit of money. It may be that you will decide that there are some items that you will not really need to buy at all anymore or that you will just buy them on the odd occasion. There will be some that you will want to continue to buy though. Try to think about which are necessary to you and which are not.

Use savings to pay it

If you have savings then it could be worth using these to pay off the credit card. You might feel that you want to keep them to get the interest, but you need to think hard about whether this is a good idea. It is very likely that the interest that you get paid on savings will be less than what you are paying out on your credit card. You should be able to find this out by contacting your bank. It can be hard to use savings like this as you have probably worked hard to save them up and you might be saving for a specific thing. However, it can make a big difference to the amount of money you are paying out in interest each month.

Compare all prices

It is wise to compare the prices of everything when you are shopping. This will enable you to make sure that you are not paying out more than you need to. You could find that if you take more notice of prices you could end up saving a lot of money. Do not just look at things you buy in person, but compare prices on insurance and other financial products and online purchases to make sure that you are not paying more than necessary. Once you get into the habit of doing this, you will tend to do it all of the time. It can be a great thing to do. Obviously you may not always want to buy the cheapest item as you may feel that it is not such good quality, but it is wise to be aware of what is available and at what price. With the Internet it is easy to compare prices without having to go to lots of different shops or telephone lots of companies.

Find ways to earn more

It could be wise to see whether there are any methods that you can find to earn more money. You will then be able to pay more money off the credit card as you will have more available. It may be that you will be able to work more hours in the job that you do or find an additional job. There may be ways that you can earn online as well. You may even be able to sell some things and make some money that way. It is not always easy to do this sort of thing and you may have tried lots of ways to make money in the past. However, opportunities change and so it is always worth keeping your eye out and seeing what is available and also to look at money making forums and speak to others about making money so that you are aware of the opportunities that are out there.

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