Cut your credit card debt down with these reduction tips

If you have been troubled with galloping credit card debt, then don’t feel isolated since there are millions like you who are running the same debt race.
However, a lot of them have chosen to repay their debts right away and lead a stable financial life.

This article doesn’t speak about credit card debt consolidation or
credit card debt settlement, but rather tells you about various clever few steps that you can take to tame your unruly outstanding credit balances from spiraling out further and to pay it off with ease.

When trying to reduce credit card debt you must keep one thing in mind and that is you cannot alter your debt situation overnight and that there is no one-size-fits-all solution to this problem. So, here are some of the myriad ways to reduce your credit card debt:

Figure out your debt scenario

You need to unravel all the latest credit card statements and calculate the total amount of credit card bills you need to pay. Moreover, you should write down all the interest rates charged on your cards in a single place. You will find these some information in the statements issued to you by your creditors.

However, if you don’t find any such information, then do call up your creditors and get the necessary information from them. It is important to make a debt list that has the following details like type of credit card, name of the credit card/creditor, present payable balance and rate of interest levied on the bills.

Stay away from your cards

Keep all your credit cards out of your sight. However, it should be accessible enough to be used in case of utter emergency. You may choose to put those cards in any safe place, like attic or basement. Please note that the key to success is to remove from your mind that you own credit cards, in order to minimize misusing them. Once you are done with this, please visit all your online credit accounts (e.g. in shops or e-commercial sites) where you have been using your bank's cards on a regular basis and clear off all your card details from there.

Ensure that you have deleted your card details from each and every place where you had subscribed for online services. This is because you need to do away with the habit of making payments without using the actual money.

Watch out for 0% balance transfer offers

In addition, you can keep a watch on the credit card offers banks provide to their new customers. For instance, look out for balance transfer offers currently being provided by your creditors. The offer may be on a new card or on the existing ones, but nevertheless a lot effective in reducing your credit card debt.

In this case, if your creditor (or new creditor) offers you a 0% balance transfer opportunity (usually for 12 to 15 months of 0% APR), then that will be the best incentive they might ever give you and you might ever come across. So, your first priority in this regard would be to search for such attractive offer that result in 0% of interest on your credit card debt, at least for one year.

Approach your creditors for improved rates

Apart from any sort of balance transfer offers, you may well directly approach your creditors for improved rate of interests on your credit cards. You can consult your debt list to select the cards whose rates you want to reduce. Picking up each credit card and calling up on the number mentioned in its back to ask for a rate reduction is the way to go.

However, it is very likely that some of the customer service representatives of the creditors might not relent on your requests, then in that case ask for the shift manager or supervisor in order to speak about your financial hardship.

You should be polite while speaking on this matter since flying off the handle wouldn’t help you in getting your rates slashed. Moreover, you can inform the concerned person that you may transfer all the balances to a different card. This will hopefully give you an added edge during the negotiation process.

Yasmine Wilson is a financial writer. She loves writing articles related to finance based topics such as debt, credit, mortgage, insurance, investment. She's associated with Debtcc community. To know more about her community, please visit here.