We all know it’s a bad financial move to carry credit-card debt from one month to the next. But we also know that paying down that debt can be a struggle.
This is especially true if you have a lot of credit-card debt. It’s easy to give up on paying down that debt when you open your credit-card statement to find that your debt has risen to $5,000, $10,000, $20,000 or beyond.
The key, though, is to commit to chipping away at that debt however you can. If you own a Discover credit card, you can access an online tool to help you in your efforts to slash your debt.
Discover’s Paydown Planner, which is offered free to all Discover cardholders, will let you determine exactly how much money you can set aside each month to meet your goal of paying off your credit-card debt.
Small Steps:
The problem many consumers make when tackling credit-card debt is that they let themselves get overwhelmed by the size of this debt. Don’t fall into this trap. Instead, vow to set aside a bit extra each month to gradually pay down your card balances. This allows you to tackle your debt problems in smaller doses.
The Discover Paydown Planner works on the same principal.
You can log into this online tool by visiting its home page and clicking onto the “Log In” button. Once you do this, you’ll be asked to enter your user ID or account number. Once you enter this, you’ll be able to access the Paydown Planner.
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How it Works:
When you log onto the Paydown Planner, you’ll be asked to make a choice: Do you want to pay off your entire credit-card balance or just a portion of it? Once you tell Discover how much of your debt you want to eliminate, the Paydown Planner will go to work.
First, it will access your account information, pulling up your total card debt. It will then ask you a serious of questions. You’ll have to input how much money you think you can spend a month on your credit-card debt. It’ll ask you, too, how soon you want to have your debt eliminated, and how much more debt you think you’ll add to your balance each month.
Once you provide this information, the Paydown Planner will calculate how long it will take you to pay off your debt. For instance, if you have a debt of $5,000, you want to pay $250 a month on your credit card bill and you estimate that you’ll make $100 worth of new purchases with your Discover card each month, the Paydown Planner will tell you at what date your debt will disappear.
The planner will also tell you what your credit-card balance will be, if you follow your spending and paying numbers, every month until you erase your debt.
A Planning Tool:
It’s a handy planning tool because it provides you with a monthly goal. It’s easier to pay down large amounts of debt if you look at the process as a series of small journeys. It’s not easy to come up with enough money to eliminate a $10,000 credit-card debt.
But it’s not that difficult to come up with an extra $200 every month to make that $10,000 debt gradually disappear.
Discover Card offers a host of financial-planning tools such as the Paydown Planner to its customers. If you’re struggling with your credit-card debt, experiment with these tools. They just might help you whittle away at those overwhelming credit-card bills.
