By now many of us have received our stimulus checks. It’s a welcome relief to everyone who got theirs. For me it’s the first part of working the Snowball Method of debt reduction. I’m going to completely pay off one of our credit cards and start working on the other two as the weeks roll by.
My goal is to be debt free by 2022 or 2023. I want all the extra cash that slips out of the bank account to stop. I don’t mind spending money if I’m getting something in return or using a service, but debt payoff is so pointless because you’re paying on something you enjoyed months, even years ago!
The way the Snowball method works is that you pay more than the minimum on your smallest debt first and get it paid off. So let’s say you have $100 payment on a card monthly and you start paying off $200 a month. The debt goes away quicker!
When you pay off card one technically you’d have $100 more a month to spend on something. By using that $100 to pay off card two you’re getting the debt on card two to snowball.
In theory by the time you get to card three you can pay the $100 from card one and $100 from card two onto the third one. The snowball payment is now twice as big as you were making on the first card.
Genius, right?
I didn’t think of it. It’s a Dave Ramsey thing and from what it looks like according to a calculator I used, if I follow his plan I can payoff all our debt by the end of 2022 which has been hanging around for YEARS!
What’s your favorite finance trick you have learned? Share in the comments!
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