How to Pay Off Holiday Debt Fast 10 Easy Tips

Paying with a credit card — Charge my Credit Card

Now that the Holiday's have passed I did some investigating on the best way to pay off Holiday Debt and NOT to start the New Year with big credit card bills that last all year long. Here is what I Un-Covered.

A pile of one dollar bills — Every Dollar Adds Up..

The average person spends upwards of $1000.00 on their credit cards during the season hopefully that wasn't you but if it was the first thing you need to do is try to tally up all of your purchases with your receipts and if you don't have them all try to review your credit card purchases online or call the customer service number on the back of the card for your balance.
Write down each card and the balance and interest rate in ascending order.
Budget for the first 3 months - assess how much excess cash you have every month after your expenses this will be your disposable income. If you cannot pay off the full amounts in January pay as much as you can to reduce the interest on the remaining balances highest to lowest interest rate. Try not to just pay the minimum payment requested as this will only insure that the bills will be around till next Christmas.
Here is an interesting option called the Debt Snowball Method - Put all your extra cash to the card with the lowest balance and keep paying the minimum monthly payment on everything else. Then after you pay off that one use the money you were using to pay off the first debt and combine or SNOWBALL by adding that money to the next lowest debt. Essentially you are paying the exact same amount out of pocket month to month until you pay off your debt. They say the power is in the SNOWBALL. The beauty of this method seems to be that it doesn't require any lifestyle change after paying something off. You are already using that extra money toward debt so why not continue to use it to get out of debt faster?
Consider your Tax Return - Assess your tax situation to see if you will be receiving a tax refund this year. WWW.Turbotax.com allows you to work on your tax return without filing. If you file electronically you may receive your refund in February, which would be great for paying off your balances quickly, and not going on vacation (not easy to do, but smart)
If you lack that willpower, you may want to consider a short term side hustle - Lyft, Uber, Ubereats, Rover.com if you like pets...just some realistic quick ideas
Or Sell your Extra Stuff - with the Holidays over chances are you have some extra things laying around the house that you may not want or need. How about selling some stuff. Try EBAY, Letitgo, craigslist etc all you need is a cell phone these days snap a pic and list it, you would be pleasantly surprised to see what people will buy and how much they will pay for items that you might have thrown out, or believe are of little value.
Use your extra checks to pay off your debt quick. A couple of times a year there are 5 Fridays in a month so on those months use that extra check to make an extra payment.
If it is looking like you may need more than 6 months to pay off your credit card debt you may want to consider a balance transfer to a Zero Percent Interest card especially if the card you used has a high interest rate. They do usually charge between 3 and 5 percent of the transferred balance but it may be worth it if it is going to take you longer than 6 months to pay off. You can google Zero percent balance transfer cards and can get a list of the top 5 to contact.
Start thinking about next year - Set up a monthly savings plan. Estimate your spending by reviewing what you spent this year and divide the amount by 12 months then deposit that amount into a high interest savings account or better yet set up an automatic transfer from your main checking account into a savings account so you do not even notice the money being saved.
Willpower - This is the most powerful weapon in your "get out of debt" arsenal. Without willpower most of these other steps would not be doable so do whatever it takes to keep your will to pay off your debt. Reward yourself after each credit card is paid off. The good thing is that willpower is like a muscle which means you can train it.