This post was contributed by a community member. The views expressed here are the author's own.

Health & Fitness

Budget Mondays

Monday – 1/13/2014

It’s Monday – a painful day for most people, yours truly included. Sometimes it is made even more painful as we remember just how much money we ended up spending over the weekend.

Budget

Find out what's happening in Nyack-Piermontwith free, real-time updates from Patch.

It’s one word that can make people cringe, angry and sad all at the same time, a rare occurrence indeed. There are plenty of reasons for this – people are told at work that their budgets are being cut, their ideas cannot be funded because they are not in the budget, and in our personal life, our budgets don’t usually quite match up to our desires.

Credit card debt is a constant struggle for many people, and this is oftentimes the worst right after the holiday season. Debt and expenses start to roll in around this time of year, and the prospect of paying off all of the credit card debt at once can be overwhelming. The issue of credit card debt, however, is not limited to a specific time of year or a specific problem — debt, and especially credit card debt, are problems that plague many people throughout the year. Excessive credit card debt can impact your credit score, which can impact your ability to obtain auto/home or college loans, and possibly even impact your job search.

Find out what's happening in Nyack-Piermontwith free, real-time updates from Patch.

With that in mind, there are several steps that can be taken to assist in the paying down of credit card debt. While not an overnight solution, these form a solid strategy of debt repayment.

1) Make a budget — as the title of this column suggests, this is a personal favorite. Without a plan, the probability of success is much lower.

2) Pay more than the minimum balance — interest payments can eat into your savings very quickly.

3) Trim credit card usage — while this might be painful at first, if you can trim the amount of fund being charged onto the card while paying it down, the balance will shrink.

We’ve removed the ability to reply as we work to make improvements. Learn more here

The views expressed in this post are the author's own. Want to post on Patch?