How to Quickly Clear Your Credit Cards

Over recent years credit cards have provided a huge number of people with convenience, ease, flexibility and in some cases a real financial lifeline. However, whilst many people have benefitted from credit cards there are many who have seen their credit card balances increase month on month until they are maxed out to the hilt. It is important with credit card debt – particularly high interest credit card debt – to try and clear the balance as quickly as possible to avoid being stung for huge amounts of interest or drowning in credit card debt for years to come.

There are a number of ways in which you can clear your credit cards more quickly and help pay off credit card debt in order to avoid being caught up in a web of credit card debt for many years to come. Some of the options available to help you clear expensive credit card debt on a high interest card include:

• Pay more than the minimum payment: If you stick to making only the minimum repayment each month you will find that you will be paying the debt off for many years to come, even on a modest amount of debt. You will also pay a fortune in interest by doing this. You should pay off as much as you can each month, as even paying a small amount over and above the minimum can help you to repay your credit card debt more quickly

• Transfer your balance onto a 0 percent card: It can be really helpful to transfer the outstanding balance from your high interest credit card onto a 0 percent balance transfer card. Whilst you will probably have to pay a transfer fee, which is generally a percentage of the total amount being transferred, you can then enjoy a generous period of interest free credit within which to repay your transferred debt. There are also life of balance transfer cards, where you can benefit from a really low rate of interest for the life of the transferred balance, which is ideal for those who feel that they need a little longer to repay the debt

• Consider consolidation: If you are struggling with both credit card debt and other unsecured debts such as loans and overdrafts, you may want to consider consolidation. This is where you wrap up all of your smaller debts with one larger one, the advantage being that you only have one creditor to deal with, can manage your debts more easily and could even reduce the amount of interest that you pay and the amount of your monthly repayment

Esther blogs about money and personal finance covering everything from credit cards, loans and mortgages to tax reduction and interest rates.