Debt Free / Savings Challenge Week 6: Break Out Your Scissors

Here we are – entering week 6 of the challenge for 2012.  How are things coming along?  Have you made any extra payments yet?  Who knows – maybe you had a windfall of some sort which has allowed you to pay off one of your debts!!  Where ever you find yourself in this challenge, next comes a big step.  You are going to fully commit to never pulling out one of your credit cards to risk increasing debt.  That means it is time to dig out your scissors and perform your very own “plastectomy” (as Dave Ramsey calls it).

It know it can be scary to cut up those cards.  However, you have done great thus far! You don’t want to stop now. If you still have your credit cards, the temptation is too great for you to use them.  It can be so easy to say – I’ll just charge $20 this week and you are again falling further back into debt.

Over and over again, I have people comment with “but I can’t reserve a room or rental car or anything without a credit card.”  Good news!  You can use your debit card!  I have only ever had one company tell me a debit card would not work and you know what??? I didn’t do business with them!  There was another option available to me and they did accept my debit card – so they got my business.

I’ve also had people tell me – what if I have an emergency?  If you followed our steps, you will have your $1000 in savings.  If you are not yet there, that is still not any reason to keep your credit card.  You don’t want to take one step forward and fall two steps back.   Remember that for most of us, credit cards are what got us into this debt in the first place.  We are making life changes and no longer using credit cards is one of them.

Make sure that you also call the credit card companies and tell them to close the accounts for future purchases.  Be careful as many of them will try to talk you out of doing so.  Just tell them “I’m doing this because of Dave Ramsey” and many of them will immediately stop the hard sell of keeping your line of credit open.  Yes – they KNOW about Dave! LOL!

I know it is scary, but you’ve made the commitment NOT to live with any more debt and one step in achieving that goal is to eliminate accruing more debt.  Cutting up your cards is the way to achieve that.  Once you do this – you will feel liberated and definitely be on your way to living a debt free life!

If you are new to the site or reading about this for the first, time, you can go back to week 1 and get caught up on our entire series – Debt Free in 2012!!

(I am not a financial advisor and the information listed within these Debt Challenge posts is not to be construed a financial advice.   This is knowledge we gained through our own personal experiences and information as outlined in Dave Ramsey’s Financial Makeover — and is being shared as such.  Participants are not required to follow any steps listed if they do not wish to do so. Financial concerns/issues should be addressed with a professional in order to receive advice and assistance.)