Do Your Best To Avoid Getting In Credit Card Debt

Being in credit card debt is no fun at all. If you are in credit card debt you know what I mean. That panicky feeling every time the phone rings, a tingling, queasy sensation when you check the mail every day, and your heart nearly stopping when the doorbell rings unexpectedly; all these can be some symptoms of being in credit card debt, especially if its serious.

Fortunately, most of the time I’m in credit card debt it’s not so bad. There have been a couple of times however where I was quite certain the major credit companies out there were getting together to hire some angry goons to break my knee caps. If you find yourself in a similar situation, you are certainly not alone; credit card debt has been raising at record speeds in many countries around the world lately. According to some recent studies, the average American family today has over 8000 dollars in credit card debt, which is a huge increase over past debt levels above and beyond inflation.

So why are we in credit card debt so much of the time these days? Is it just the inevitable result of a post industrial society, or have we just lost our ability to control our spending? I’m not really sure what the answer to that is, but one things is certain; being in credit card debt can be a real nightmare.

The best way I’ve found to get out of credit card debt is to avoid getting in credit card debt in the first place. Once you rack up a large debt the interest alone begins to bog you down and you can almost hear the credit card companies reeling with laughter far off in their corporate strongholds somewhere deep in credit card land. If you have several open credit lines and find yourself getting deep in credit card debt, you may want to consider closing out all but one or two lines. I canceled all but one credit line, and its been a lot easier to manage my credit debt ever since.

Another thing I do that seems to help avoid falling too deep in credit card debt is limiting the frequency I use my card. As a general rule I try to limit myself to just one use of my card a week, and force myself to pay for everything else by check or cash. There are of course times where I have to break the rule, but just trying to follow it has helped me cut down on a lot of extraneous costs for things I didn’t really need anyway.