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Debt Elimination For Dummies

_If you're spending more than you're earning every month, you're digging yourself into a pit of debt. Getting out of debt, is, sadly, more difficult than getting in to it. It's a worthwhile goal to shoot for, and one that's closer at hand than you might think.

The first step to getting out of debt is knowing what you're spending. Take out a list – and take out your receipts for the last three months (or your credit card statement). Tally up everything – from the essentials, like your mortgage payment or rent, to the thinks like your Netflix subscriptions or your subscription to World of Warcraft. In particular, look at what you're spending on meals.

This can be a painful experience. A significant part of the American population has no idea how much money they spend each month, and they don't read their credit card statements or bank statements regularly. Going through this is a critical part of getting out of debt, because it shows you exactly how you're getting into debt – and how quickly.

Before you can reverse the course, you need to know how you got to where you're at, and how quickly you got there. Take the time to do this – it's critically important. You need to see how much you're going into debt each month, and start to plan strategically on how to stop this process, and then dig your way out.

There are two ways to reverse the trend of getting into debt: Increase how much money you earn, or reduce your expenses. The traditional way of getting out of debt focuses on the latter; we're going to touch on both and how to use them in concert.

Earning more money has a lot to recommend it. First and foremost, it doesn't cut into your existing lifestyle...and there are ways to go about it that are very simple. If you're reading this article, you have internet access.

With internet access, you can find a number of ways to earn extra money at home, most commonly by doing office related work; there are brokerage sites that try to link up freelancers with jobs; most of these involve doing basic customer service or technical support jobs from home, or office related work with word processing or spreadsheets.

Other extra income options include going through your old belongings and selling them, either at a yard sale, or on eBay. Particularly if you have old computer games, or old books, these can fetch premium prices at either venue.

The last extra income option may be the most difficult, but is also the most rewarding: Consider asking for a raise at your current job, or asking for extra work if there's work to be done that nobody else is doing. As an added benefit, you'll also be reducing your free time, and free time is often anything but – it's spent in front of a television set, bombarded with ads.