invisible blog

The Zen Habits blog has published a list of ideas for how to reduce your debt. A couple of the tips include:

Have only one credit card with a low limit, and only one loan with monthly payment not exceeding 25% of income.

For entertainment, visit friends and be creative on how to entertain yourselves and your family without spending a dime.

Be realistic. If you started accumulating debt three or four years ago, realize that it will probably take you more than then [sic] three or four years to get out of debt and stay out of debt.

All these tips are good, but are very general. We like to get a little more specific at invisibleblog. Here is a quick example of how to immediately feel better about your debt situation. For example, say you owe $6000.00 on your credit card. Divide that by 12. That equals $500 dollars a month. Log in to your bank account and arrange for $500.00 to be deducted from your account and put toward your credit card bill automatically. Now you can go about your way knowing that you have put an automated plan in place to reduce your debt by $6,000.00 in a year. All you have to do is keep acquiring at least $500.00 a month.

Of course, you can adjust this amount for different debt amounts and payments. The general concept is to establish a plan and make it automatic, thus removing some human error out of the equation. If you have other practical tips for dealing with debt let us hear about them in the comments. - IM