Well I am sitting at Maccas at Redlynch writing this sucking down a coffee; but with my commitment to get rid of the credit cards; I thought that some of the tactics that I have used to facilitate more money to pay them off might be useful to others trying to do similar.

There’s so many ways that you can trim back without causing you any heartache, here’s the methods that I used:

• Internet Access: How many of you actually look at the notices that your ISP send you?  Not too many of you?  Well, ISP’s are usually fine tuning their plans and every now and then you can probably save some money by moving to a different plan.  I managed to save $20.00 per month by moving to a new plan and actually had a 10Gb increase allowance to what I had on an account that was costing me $20.00 more.
• Hosting: Those of you that have a web site, can you get a better deal form your current host?  If not, then maybe it may be time to consider looking at another provider.  This site used to be hosted in the US and was costing me $120 a year; it is now hosted in Malaysia costing me about $88.00 Australian a saving of $32.00 per year.
• Phone bill: How many of you have a mobile phone?  Most of you?  Well depending on your plan, you may get a heap of free calls every month.  My plan for $69.00 with my iPhone gives me $400.00 worth of call credit each month; I now never use the home phone and use my mobile instead.  Now I don’t make a lot of calls anyway each month, but if you have been given these  “free” calls, then you’re mad not to use them and give Telstra, Optus or whoever your phone line is through more money that could be staying in your pocket.
• Overdraft: Do any of you have a bank overdraft on your everyday accounts?  Well if your bank doesn’t charge you for the use of it beyond the monthly fee that they normally charge, then this is an amount that each pay period you can use toward your balance.  While some may view this as a false economy, think about it for a sec – while you have any balance on your cards, you are accruing interest on that amount that you have to pay the financial institution providing you the card.  Amounts that you pay off, no matter how little contribute to decreasing that amount of interest charged and that has to be a good thing.

These are just a few of the ways that you can save money and facilitate a bigger contribution to your credit card payments each month.  Although simple enough, the more money that you can put onto the account each month the less that you pay in interest; I hope that these few have given you some assistance in getting rid of your cards.