Credit card debt can be stressful, but if you have a plan, and you know when your debt is going to disappear, that debt can reduce rather quickly.  Remember that credit card debt doesn’t disappear easily, and it takes money to kill debt.  If you can remember these simple 2 basic rules, your cards can be paid off fairly quick.

Start by making a game plan – BankRate has a great calculator that will tell you how long it will take to pay off your credit card.  Use that calculator to determine your game plan.  Once you have that game plan in place, it’s going to be a lot easier for you to know where you’re going with your credit cards.  If you don’t have a plan, this is just going to cause more stress.

Start with the highest rates first - The next thing that you want to do is write out a list of all of your credit cards.  You want to list them from highest interest rate, to the lowest.  From there, you’re going to want to put most of your money toward the highest rate card.  If you have good enough credit, you may want to transfer your balance to a 0% balance transfer credit card.

Always pay the minimums - When you’re paying the higher rates off, you’ll want to make sure that you’re paying the minimums on your other cards as well.  If you forget to pay your minimums, and miss a payment, you’ll find that this is going to impact your credit score, which is something you don’t want.

Cash out the savings - If you have say, $10,000 saved up, and it’s only earning you 2-3% interest, it doesn’t make sense to have it there when your credit cards are charging you 19%.  You want to make sure that you have 6 months of expenses set aside, just in case of an emergency.  But other than that, I would pay off your cards, rather than save.

Renegotiate terms with the card companies - Did you know that you can lower your rate with the credit card companies?  A while ago, I wrote about how you can negotiate with the credit card companies, and get your interest rate lowered.

Money will always pay off debt, and long as you make it, and have motivation, there’s no reason on why you can’t pay off your cards fast.  There’s not secret, or code that will do it quick, but if you follow these tips, you can become debt free in no time!