Maybe you’ve tried using cash for your purchases, but you always find yourself running out, and that credit card is right there, and it’s accepted almost everywhere.  Maybe you’ve worked out a budget, but the follow-through hasn’t been there, and you run over each month on little purchases all over the place.  Maybe you’ve gotten a little more serious and gotten your cards out of reach, either by freezing them in a big block of ice or by giving them to a friend you trust not to let you off the hook so easily.  But, when it gets right down to it, ice melts, and friends give in because they’re sick of you pestering them and because, after all, you are a grown-up.

If your debt continues to eat you alive despite all of these steps, and you really want to get rid of your debt, it’s time to get out the scissors and cut up your cards.  Into tiny pieces, so you can’t use them in stores.  Into tiny enough pieces that you can’t reconstruct the number.

The credit card company, of course, won’t forget what you owe them, so cutting up the card won’t make the bills go away.  But it will make it much more difficult to add any new charges to that account.  You’d be limited to online and phone purchases, if you could remember the number and the little code on the back.

Drastic times call for drastic measures, and this is one of the more drastic measures you can take on your credit card habit.

(Photo: SqueakyMarmot)

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