Review your purchasingCreate surplus in your life. There are two simple ways to do this: 1. Lower your consumption; and 2. Increase your income. For most people, the first option is the most immediately realistic, although you shouldn't sell yourself short on aiming for the second option as a longer term goal. Get yourself started with the following:
Use your frustrations to change your attitude on consumer goods.Use your frustrations to change your attitude on consumer goods. One very good way to relieve your sense of deprivation is to stop reading fashion, home style, and consumer technology magazines and flashy TV shows that subtly make you feel bad about not having the latest designer item, gadget, or home improvement (it's not even possible to keep up)--and their ads that boldlymake you feel worse. Can that top-of-the-line camera, step machine, or latest mobile phone really make you feel happier when you know that the purchase is just driving you deeper into debt? No one notices whether you use expensiveshampoo or not, so long as your hair is clean. On the other hand, you don't have to flaunt your thriftiness too much. Keep a healthy balance of knowing what you want versus what you need.
Just one's enough...Forget about juggling credit cards. It’s not big and it’s not clever to give yourself a false sense of financial prudence, when in fact you're sliding deeper into debt. Instead, play the sniper: pick your cards off, one by one, and save yourself the unnecessary expenses from having too many credit cards. The target is to have only one bank account and one credit card for emergencies. Indeed, if you can whittle down your credit card to a $500 emergency fund card and rely on cash transactions (including debit cards) for everything else, you'll be laughing.
