Have you ever thought of making a game of debt reduction? Well, think for a second about the debt you’d most like to see g-o-n-e.
Maybe it’s your student loan that you’ve had forever, or a credit card with ridiculously high interest rates.
Imagine what it would feel like to be rid of that today. Wouldn’t it be great?
Now imagine that you were just $5 away from paying it off. Would you find that $5 somewhere and get it done?
I know I would. I can taste it.
Now what if you were $50 away? Or $100? Or $500? Would you still come up with that last little bit?
If you would, why not figure out how you’d make it happen and then go ahead and knock that much more off of your debt right now?
I like to send in the extra amount that I’d planned on sending in to our mortgage, and then figure out where to get enough extra to get our mortgage down below the next $100. It’s just a little way of challenging myself to make just a little bit more progress on a regular basis.
The more you play the game, the faster your debt will be gone.
Do you ever do anything like this? Or do you have other tricks for getting rid of debt faster?
Great idea. I don’t think many people have thought about this before and should. I think many of us would be surprised at how well we would do. Plus it’s fun.
It is fun. I enjoy the challenge :)
I like when I don’t have to think about it at all. I don’t have the time or energy to constantly be worrying about my debt so I just put it on auto-pilot. I do the planning upfront, come up with an aggressive debt repayment plan and then I set it up so the debt pays itself off.
That’s another good approach :)
I try to send extra payments when I’m tempted to spend on other things. For example, if I think about ordering pizza, I’ll send the $20 toward a debt instead. My philosophy has become, if I could afford to spend it on X, I can afford to pay more toward debt instead.
Good idea!
Clever idea, very clever.
That’s a great idea! We do try and create a little competition for ourselves on the income side of our ledger. Every month we try to figure out a way to take in a little bit more than the month before. It’s challenging, but it also becomes a fun game for us.
That sounds like a fun challenge too. (And a potentially lucrative one.)
I think that’s a really fun way to do it. We actually will send a in a payment whenever we are tempted to buy something, but stay disciplined.
That’s a neat way to reward yourself.