by Alexandra Grose

Created on: August 30, 2008

Ahh...to be debt free! Something we all aspire to be, but something that many of us don't achieve. There are so many things in life that we want. Debt is so easy to get into and after a few years of acquiring all that we desire; we find that we are in over our heads financially. It seems that our debt is so great, how are we ever going to manage it, let alone pay everything off?

One of the best things in life is the ability to choose. We can choose to live in debt. We can choose to live debt free. It's much harder to make the second choice, that of living debt free. The cost of living is so high and once in debt it is difficult to see the end of all the different payments we need to make. Mostly we are just managing to keep our heads above water.

But with dedication and work we can eventually grind away at those bills. Taking care of where our money goes and becoming responsible with our pay, eventually sees our debt inching down, week-by-week.

Becoming debt free in just a few years' means taking control of your spending. You need to earn more than you spend and if you aren't, then you need to come up with a way to earn more than you spend. You need to take a look at what areas of spending you can cut back on.

Increase your income, reduce your spending and you are on your way to becoming debt free. But how do you do this? First make a budget. Look at where your money is going. Cut out unnecessary spending. What are you buying that you can do without? Once you start to concentrate on where your being frivolous with your money, you work out what you can change and you start to see areas in which you can save money.

Pay at least double payments on all debts. If you can't do this with every debt, do it with at least one. Once that one is out of the way, use the money that went to that debt to concentrate on getting another debt paid.

A line of credit mortgage is a great way to reduce the interest on your home, but did you know that you could also apply this same idea to your credit card? A line of credit is where all your pay goes into your mortgage, reducing the interest and then you redraw on the line of credit, to pay any bills you have. However you do need to be very careful with your spending. If you know you wont be able to help spending what's in the redraw, then this method isn't for you.

You may instead, pay double on your debts. Paying double will save years on your payments. Did you know: if you have a credit card bill of $2000 - that it takes 26 years to pay

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