Shred Your Credit Card Debt

December 24, 2007

So, you succumbed to the temptation and used your charge card to get you through the holidays.  Well, you can’t turn back the clock, nor stop the mailman from coming, but you can still exercise a little damage control.

Right now, get out your scissors and cut your way through to financial success. Although it may seem painful now, you will thank yourself tomorrow.  Cut through that magnetic strip or put your charge card through the shredder, either way will work.

If you can’t bring yourself to get rid of your financial security blanket, enlist your kid, nephew, or niece.  For once, they will have permission to destroy something and not get into trouble!

I speak from personal experience. While I was going to college and raising two small children on child support and food stamps, I used my good credit to pay the winter utility bills, buy groceries at the end of the month, purchase school clothes, and more. Well, you can guess what happened.

Suffice it to say, this year I liberated myself. Long before the holidays I took the shredder and a pair of scissors to my credit cards. Now, I am no longer tempted to spend money I do not have in the first place.

As a result, this Christmas was a cash and carry holiday.

Yes, I could still order items through the Internet.  However, I had to use my checking account debit card.  If the money wasn’t in the checkbook, I didn’t need what I wanted to buy after all.

I may still have a mountain of bills to pay off, but I have climbed to the top.  I know the mountain is not going to get any higher in 2008, because my scissors cut to financial success.

How do you plan to reach your financial goals next year?

Tina

Tina

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Tina

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Comments

7 Responses to Shred Your Credit Card Debt

  • bobby

    in 2011 i declared financial independence from credit cards, i was at nearly $12,000 in debt, lost my job 2 weeks after incurring it, and on october 24th i pulled out my lawn mower and mowed down my credit cards, seeing them in pieces fueled a fire inside me to pay off and stay out of that credit mess once and for all!!! today, i have just $5000 left and going down!! and credit card FREE!!

  • Alton J. Jones

    My blog, How To Get Good Credit Gab, provides the opportunity to share thoughts, ideas and experiences about obtaining good credit and emphasizes the importance of building and maintaining good credit and the perils of personal financial mismanagement.

    Please consider adding this video you your site:
    http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2fi0okku_X4

  • Ben

    Eric, congrats on freezing your cards 🙂 Nice to hear you’ve found a method that works for you!

  • Eric

    Despite years of personal finance reading and learning, it has taken me much longer than expected to get a handle on things. I’ve made a great deal of progress in the last several months, and have been very excited about my financial future. That all changed in the last two weeks.

    Suffice it to say I live overseas, and planned a trip to visit a girl. (In my experience the most expensive spending category by far.) When I ran into numerous problems, instead of postponing or canceling the trip, I used credit (and the last six months of savings) to solve them. I’m still surveying the damage, but it has probably set me back six months.

    I can’t say I regret it, because it was a great trip, solidifying the relationship with possibly my future wife, and some things are worth nearly any expense. Nonetheless it has certainly renewed (and required) my dedication to sound finances.

    The point of all of this was to give you an appreciation of where I’m at, and my response to your post. The idea of cutting up my credit cards is not new, but I’ve never seriously considered doing it, since I’d prefer to focus on controlling my behavior, not eliminating options. But I’m willing to consider nearly anything at this point, and the idea really gave me a rush of excitement… could I really do it? Under what circumstances will I end up regretting this?

    I’ll save you the suspense and let you know I compromised. I did not cut them up, but I did take some advice I read a while back, and my cards are currently in my freezer being frozen in a block of ice. If I want to use them again, that will certainly cause me to pause and be sure of what I’m doing.

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