This month I’m focussing on paying off debt! Over the past two weeks, I’ve talked about how to figure out how much you owe and determine the best approach for you to pay off your debt!
I understand – you’ve already put so much work in just taking care of steps 1 and 2. But you’ve made so much progress – so keep pushing on! Now you know how much you owe and how you want to pay it off – the next step is to figure out how you’ll come up with extra cash to pay off your debt faster. There are two main ways to come up with extra cash:
- Earn more
- Cut back
I’ll put my suggestions below – and I’d love to hear yours.
1. Earn more
While there are definitely drawbacks to living in a “gig” economy, the good news is this enables you to find easy options to earn extra money. Here are some:
- Driving – all kinds of choices here. You can deliver packages (Amazon), food (GrubHub) or people (Uber)
- Paper route (yes, they still exist)
- Temp agency – Find extra work for your days or evenings off
- Surveys – more details in my post here
- Sell stuff – more details in my post here.
- If you’re creative – you can try to sell things on Fiverr or Etsy.
- Rent out a room on Airbnb.
There are lots to choose from here – just depends on your skills and resources. (e.g. if you don’t drive, then working for Uber is not going to happen :)). Also, think about what’s reasonable for you – if you live in a major city, the stress of delivering packages or food may not be worth it!
2. Cutting back
You’ve figured out a few ways to bring in some extra bucks – but you still want to throw more at your debt. Now it’s time to figure out if there are any areas to cut back in:
- Daily expenses – I know everyone always tells you to cut back on your daily coffee. But sometimes, you truly need that coffee trip to keep your sanity! You can consider less expensive coffee or buy it once a day instead of cutting it out altogether.
- Bigger expenses – take a look at how many streaming services you have or if you’re truly using cable TV. I’m not advocating you cut your entertainment options down to nothing. BUT if you have 5 streaming services, you may be able to do without 1 or 2 of them!
- Renegotiate! Call your cable or credit card company and see if you can get a better deal or lower interest rate. This is one of the quickest ways to save money without sacrifice.
- If you have good self-discipline, you can consider transferring your balance to a 0% interest credit card. You have to be sure you won’t run up a balance on your new card or, worse yet – not pay it off before the 0% rate ends, and you get hit with a huge charge!
Moving forward
You may find it easier to cut back than earn more money – after all, we all have a lot of interests and responsibilities outside of our main jobs, so taking on more work may just not be an option for you. I think you’ll be able to find 1 or 2 things on both my lists that work for you and will help you start paying off debt that much faster!
Happy earning or saving – or both! Let me know what approach works for you in the comments!
