Tips like these helped us pay off $127K in debt. You can read our story in Slaying the Debt Dragon: How One Family Conquered Their Money Monster and Found an Inspired Happily Ever After.
Welcome to 31 Debt Free Missions! This year on Queen of Free, during each day in January, we will provide 31 concrete debt free missions or challenges for you to take on to #SlayDebt and take charge of your finances this year. Each mission will take you less than an hour (some will only require 15 minutes). Whereas, 31 Ways to Kick Debt in the Teeth (which I’m reworking this year and reposting in January, too) focused on some of the philosophical changes you need to make in order to be successful with money, 31 Debt Free Missions are action steps to put into place after you have your thinking straight. Even better, during the month of January, we’re revisiting each of these challenges in order to sharpen our money saving and debt slaying skills.
Are you ready? Your mission is as follows:
Day #6: Quit Using Credit Cards
So in the world of paying off debt, this can be a controversial topic. Some personal finance gurus suggest obliterating your cards, others say it’s ok to have a credit card if you pay off the balance every month.
And this topic typically makes people both curious about our practices:
How do you purchase anything?
Book flights?
Stay at hotels?
Or defensive:
Well, we pay ours off every month.
I use the reward points.
I don’t really have a problem with overspending.
What if there’s an emergency?
Listen, I get that you might not be ready to completely ready to chop up your credit card into teeny tiny pieces. Some people like the security of a credit for emergencies or to use for online purchases. It doesn’t work for us. In our household there have been no credit cards since 2008 and I have both booked flights and hotel rooms with our debit card which is backed by Mastercard. Funds come directly from our bank account but the purchase is secured by the credit card company so if our account was ever hacked then we wouldn’t lose every dollar in our checking account.
Because we had a problem with turning to credit cards in emergency situations, we saved up a substantial cash fund to provide for those unexpected expenses that always happen.
Bottom line, if you can pay off your card every single month without accruing a single penny of interest, you are a rare bird (don’t you feel special?). The majority of us can’t and there’s never an obvious sign when we have slipped beyond the point of no return.
Here’s the most shocking truth of this post. Are you ready? To be debt free, you have to stop borrowing. And using credit is borrowing. But just in case you can’t quite give up the junk yet, here are a few ways to ease your feet onto the path of eliminating the use of credit.
TAKE THE CARD OUT OF YOUR WALLET
Simply removing the card from your wallet will keep you from reaching it in moments of weakness. By the way, this was an incredibly powerful step that the King of Free took. He placed the last credit card we had in a desk drawer long before we launched into our debt slaying journey.
If you’re married and you want your spouse to get on board, you will be more effective to model the behavior you long for your spouse to imitate rather than nagging them to death. Every time I saw that card in the desk drawer, I was reminded of Brian’s example.
FREEZE YOUR CARD IN ICE
*Insert joke about cold hard cash.* So seriously, if it’s too much of a temptation to have a credit card in the desk (after all you could use it to make online purchases on the impulse at home) consider freezing the card in a block of ice to keep your paws off. If there truly is an emergency that you can’t think of any other possible way of paying for (selling something, using emergency fund cash, or eliminating an item like cable or smart phones from your budget immediately come to mind), then you could de-thaw the card. At least it takes an extra step and you’ll rethink what you’re doing instead of using the credit card as an immediate crutch.
GIVE THE CARD TO SOMEONE YOU TRUST
This one can be kind of tricky but if you’re looking to break your credit card habit, you could choose to give your card to someone you trust to hold on to for you. Obviously, it would be better to ask someone who does not live with you so you have to take an extra step and on the flip side you need to give it to someone who will not use it and charge up a storm (duh). Choose wisely, young warrior.
I’ll be honest, I’d prefer for you to give up the credit sauce and function on a cash only system. The odds of you overspending or not being able to completely pay off the balance outweigh any reward points you could ever amass.
You wouldn’t play with an anaconda just because every once and awhile he gave you a nice little snuggle. Credit cards are dangerous and contrary to the pursuit of paying off debt. Give them up today to pursue becoming debt free.
Now that you’ve received your mission, DO SOMETHING ABOUT IT. Also, if you want to be sure you don’t miss a single update in this series, go ahead and subscribe! Updates will come to your inbox everyday at 8 PM.
Did you see the previous Debt Free Missions? Knock them all out this month!
- 31 Debt Free Missions: Take the Restaurant Challenge
- 31 Debt Free Missions: Run Your Credit Report
- 31 Debt Free Missions: Set Up a Tax Box
- 31 Debt Free Missions: 5 Memberships to Ditch
- 31 Debt Free Missions: Adjust Your Withholdings
My book is now available: Slaying the Debt Dragon: How One Family Conquered Their Money Monster and Found an Inspired Happily Ever After. You can also check out Inspiration to Pay Off Debt: 30 Days of Encouragement from the Queen of Free
This post contains an affiliate link. That means when you get a great deal or maybe even something for free, you also help our family pay off our mortgage early. And for that, we royally thank you!
