{"id":519,"date":"2006-09-28T09:11:41","date_gmt":"2006-09-28T16:11:41","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/getrichslowly.org\/blog\/2006\/09\/28\/in-praise-of-the-debt-snowball\/"},"modified":"2023-09-24T09:37:08","modified_gmt":"2023-09-24T15:37:08","slug":"in-praise-of-the-debt-snowball","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.getrichslowly.org\/in-praise-of-the-debt-snowball\/","title":{"rendered":"In praise of the debt snowball"},"content":{"rendered":"
During my twenties, I accumulated nearly $25,000 in consumer debt. I had a spending problem. With time, I was able to get my spending under control (mostly), but I still owned overwhelming debt. How could I get rid of it?<\/p>\n
The personal finance books all suggested the same approach:<\/p>\n
This made perfect sense. By doing this, I would be paying the minimum amount in interest over the long term. The trouble was, my highest-interest rate debt was also my debt with the biggest balance (a fully-maxed $12,000 credit card at 19.8% interest). I’d plug away at this debt for several months at a time, but then give up because it felt like I was never getting anywhere.<\/p>\n
This happened over and over. I’d start and fail. Start and fail. Then I read about the Debt Snowball method in Dave Ramsey’s The Total Money Makeover<\/em><\/a>.<\/p>\n <\/a><\/p>\n The Debt Snowball method is similar to the traditional approach except<\/em> that instead of attacking high-interest rate debts first, you attack low-balance debts first. Why? Because you’ll get the psychological lift of pinging debts off in rapid succession<\/b>. And if you’re like me, this makes all the difference. The Debt Snowball approach is:<\/p>\nHow the Debt Snowball Works<\/h2>\n
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