Waaaaaay back in Carnival of Debt Reduction #1, No Credit Needed was still in debt. His post for the premiere installment outlined his debt reduction strategies. His strategies were pretty simple:

1. Collect your debt information and list the balances, annual percentage rates (APRs), and minimum payments.
2. Go through your budget to see how much above and beyond the minimums you can throw at the debts.
3. Apply the extra payment to either the debt with the highest APR or to the debt with the lowest balance.
4. “Snowball” the payment from one to the next as the loans are paid off.

NCN chose to knock out the lowest-balance debt first rather than attack the debt with the highest APR, even though it ended up taking a little bit longer to pay off everything. But this is the main point: NCN eventually paid off all of his debts because he worked his debt reduction plan. The debt is gone, regardless of how he got there. He chose to reduce the number of debts faster than the overall balance. It’s a really good feeling to watch a balance go down to zero, and he saw that sooner rather than later.

Plan your debt reduction work, and then work your debt reduction plan!

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