How to Wean Off of Credit Cards

Let’s face it. Credit cards are super easy to use. They’re designed to be convenient. They are these small pieces of plastic that we can pull out and use to pay for all kinds of goods and services.

Remember when you got your first credit card? Remember the feeling when you could just swipe and know that you didn’t need to pay for it right this minute, but you could put off the painful part until another time? How did it feel? Let’s be honest. It felt pretty good, didn’t it? Of course, it’s easy to get used to this convenience and start to use credit cards more and more.

Do you need new clothes? Swipe the plastic. Do you need a repair on your vehicle? Swipe the plastic. Running low on fuel? You guessed it. Pull into the gas station, and swipe the plastic.

With credit cards, there are no immediate worries. Putting off the painful part of having to pay for goods and services seems to be easier somehow. At the very least, it provides a way to not have to deal with it right away and put it off for another time.

This is the supposed magic that comes with the credit card. You have the ability to put off having to deal with paying for something and just focusing on enjoying it now! How absolutely convenient!

Then the bills start to come in. Reality sets in as the total balance owed slowly creeps up over time. What started out as an endorphin-producing series of events has now turned into a reality check. You really do need to pay the money back, and you have to pay even more in the form of purchase interest charges.

That is credit card usage in a nutshell. Of course, there are some who are able to use credit cards in a responsible manner. For these folks, I see no problem with using credit cards with the intention of paying them off consistently and almost never carrying a balance. It will improve your credit score over time, and it will allow you to learn how to be responsible with consumer debt in general.

What if you’re not one of those folks who took the responsible route and find yourself up to your eyeballs in debt? Not to fear, because I’m here to tell you that you can get out of this mess. While it won’t be easy, it is not impossible.

The first thing that you need to do is to get serious about your goal to get out of debt. You have to be all-in or nothing. Having an attitude of “maybe I’ll get around to paying this off more aggressively after summer’s over,” or “maybe I can hold off until the Christmas shopping season to get more serious about paying off these credit cards” isn’t going to help you in the least.

Forget the excuses. Forget putting it off until later. Forget worrying about whether or not you will succeed.

The time to get started is now. It’s not tomorrow. It’s not next week. It’s not next month. It is right now!

Visualize what your budget would be like if you didn’t have credit card payments. I’m not even counting other types of consumer debt right now, because the vast majority of folks have at least five credit cards that are carrying a balance month to month and are not getting paid off anytime soon. That’s an average. Some may have less credit cards, and some may have more, but the problem is the same.

I understand that the credit cards isn’t the only form of consumer debt, but I think that credit cards are the most abused forms of credit. You can get an auto loan, but most banks or credit unions are looking at this as a secured debt. The loan will only be given to you if your credit fits in with their pre-established criteria, and the vehicle that you’re purchasing is worth the cost of the loan in case you default and they need to repossess the vehicle.

With a credit card, it’s entirely different. In almost all cases, a credit card is a form of unsecured debt, and except for the gas and department store cards, you can use them almost anywhere. This makes it way too easy and convenient to rack up debt, especially if you were given a sizable line of credit to begin with or were awarded with credit line increases to keep you wanting to use the credit card more and more.

Those of you who are experiencing this right now know what I’m talking about, so there’s no need to elaborate on how getting in over your head can happen in a short amount of time. However, the question remains: now that we’ve identified the problem, how do we fix it?

First, you have to stop using credit cards entirely, or at least stop using the ones that you are trying to pay down and pay off. I understand that not everyone is in a place or position to go cold turkey off of using credit cards, but I also know that you’re fooling yourself if you think that you can somehow get out of debt in a reasonable amount of time and keep using the very things that are keeping you there. It doesn’t make sense, and you have to come to this realization on your own before you can wean yourself off of credit cards completely.

Now, if you have some quick wins and pay off some cards, this is great! With this said, you need to make sure that you use that momentum to propel yourself onward towards paying off the next credit card, and you want to keep going until you have made a huge dent in your overall debt. This will not only likely improve your credit score since your debt-to-income ratio will have improved, but this will also show you without a doubt that you will get to the point where you’re not relying on credit cards at all.

It will show you that you can be in control of credit cards and use them responsibly, if you decide to use them at all. You will know without a doubt that you are a changed person when it comes to personal finances. You will get to keep more of what you earn to use how you want, since you will no longer be under obligation to use your financial resources towards credit card payments. This is one of the HUGE benefits of getting those credit cards paid off.

After all is said and done, the next step is to make sure that you’ve learned your lesson and swear off acquiring unnecessary consumer debt ever again, especially in the form of credit cards. You can still use credit cards if you choose to do so, but now you know that the way to use them is to only put something on a credit card if you know without a doubt that you can pay it off the very next month. If you can’t, then don’t do it. This is a surefire way to keep yourself from getting into the same mess ever again. God bless.