Many people find it hard to get out of the vicious circle of creating debt. Debt is a common problem. It puts extra pressure and stress on the person leading to other vices such as lying, alcoholism and possibly stealing to settle debt. If you are in debt here are some tips that will help you handle it.

1. Seriously decide that you want to become debt free. Even though you tried and failed. Think that this time you will succeed.

2. Get a piece of paper and list all the debtors and the amount required to settle debt with them. Prioritise your list; put the most urgent debtor at the top. Some debtors might have imposed a deadline on you while others are maybe more lenient (for instance friends).

3. Set deadlines by when you will pay who. Be disciplined and automatically allocate hefty amounts from your income to settle debts. The more disciplined you are the faster you will settle your debts.

4. Carefully control your expenditure, reducing it to a minimum. The more you reduce your expenditure the more money you have left to settle even more debt. You will be amazed how much money you spend in stuff you can do without for a particular period of time such as lottery tickets, magazines and dinners.

5. As soon as you pay off someone, go back to the original list of debtors on the piece of paper and cross out the person. This will make you feel better and creates a sense of achievement which will help you in your next deadline.

Once you become debt free then you have to make sure that you stay away from debt. In the next post called “Staying away from debt”, I will be giving tips of how to eliminate debt.