A Plan to Retire

 The importance of eliminating credit card debt cannot be over stated.  The money paid out in interest boggles the mind.  It is wasted money.  Money you could better spend on doing things you want to do or buying things you need or, even better saving it for a rainy day or investing it in a way to put it to work for you earning more money.  While the use of credit cards can be convenient and have legitimate uses, you should always try to keep a zero balance at the end of the month.  Why?  So you will accrue no interest charges.  But what do you do to lower the monthly interest charges on a card that you now have which has balance too high to immediately pay off?  Well here is one idea that I am going to present to you.

Use your credit card as you would your checking or savings account.

When you get your paycheck, use that money to make a huge credit card payment instead of putting it into your checking or savings account.  Then use your credit card to pay your bills as they come due.  Why?  To lower your monthly interest payment for that credit card.

If you have more than one credit card, then you should deposit your paycheck into the one that is charging you the highest interest rate.  You could then use the credit card with the lowest interest rate to pay your bills.  Remember:  the goal is to reduce the amount of money you waste each month paying credit card interest.  Eventually you will want to eliminate your credit card balances all together and then go back to using your checking and savings accounts.

 I will explore this idea in more detail later.

This is where I will discuss developing a plan to early retirement and what retirement really means.