Best way to pay off £20,000 debt

monkeyman602

Can anyone advise me how is the best way to pay off my debt. I’ve avoided checking how much I owe for ages and so it’s built up to a ridiculous amount.
I have 4 credit cards on 0% interest, 1 with interest, a store card, catalogue debt and a £3,000 overdraft. I am sick of messing about swapping credit cards to get 0% interest and every time I need to buy something I’m getting further in debt.
Would I be better getting a loan and paying it all off and avoiding credit cards altogether? I’m determined to get rid of it one way or another. I know there’ll be interest on a loan but I think I’d feel more in control.

Dobbibill

Welcome to the forum.

A loan will only work if you get rid of the other forms of credit. What experience shows us here is a consolidation loan more often than not leads to higher debt because the original credit is kept open for 'emergencies'.
The advantage of having your debt spread across different sources means you are able to focus on the ones costing you the most in interest first while maintaining min payments on the 0% offers.

The DFW board is a good place to start with a SOA. See how much you can throw at your debt. Look at the snowballing method.

Also remember to address the reason you have the debt, without doing that it could repeat itself in the future.

All the best.

enthusiasticsaver

No definitely getting a loan would not be the way to get rid of the debt.

First do you know how you got to £20k in debt in the first place? Have you identified the overspending areas and taken steps to live within your income? If not the overwhelming majority of people on here consolidate as you are considering and then build up the credit cards again so before you know it you have a loan and credit cards and are in a debt spiral. Loads of threads on here showing it almost always happens.

Stop using the catalogues, store cards, overdraft and credit cards and start to deal only in cash or using your bank debit card. You can start a DFW diary on the forum and post up an soa and make a plan to start reducing the debt rather than living on credit. Start with the most expensive.

http://www.stoozing.com/calculator/soa.php

monkeyman602

Thanks everyone, that’s great advice feeling sick at the thought of how much debt I’ve got into and just need to focus on knuckling down to pay it off, without incurring more debt along the way.