Remember raking the autumn leaves into piles? Gathering up leaves was a lot of fun when you were a kid; now you need to gather up all your debts and obligations and consolidate them. Your debt load needs to be manageable; and to do that you may need the services of a credit repair service – the point is to reduce your monthly credit card payments to a manageable level, and to then make a plan to pay them off and get a credit score.
Now, you’re going to work the tangles out of your budget, just as you might work your way through the tangles in your hair. Go over your budget line by line, looking for any expenses that can be eliminated or reduced. No budget is so good that it doesn’t need to be reviewed regularly. And if you haven’t had a written budget – dig in and write one now. You can’t recover without a plan.
While you’re doing all of this, you should be looking around for ways to increase your income. You may be able to take on a second job, move to a better position within your current job, or change jobs entirely. This change in your work can quickly help to repair your credit. You can find other ways to increase your income if you have something to sell, or a hobby or skill – cake decorating, computer skills, or handyman abilities – that you can turn into a money-maker.
There really are no glamorous, easily accomplished pathways to credit repair; rather, there are a group of no-nonsense, effort-required, ‘let’s get it done’ strategies that look suspiciously like work and, as with work, result in accomplishment. If that sounds like a good plan to you, read on.
The first step really requires no actual work at all: just stop. Stop borrowing money. Stop spending when the money you have runs out. Stop living beyond your means. True, changing your response to financial stress may be painful, but this first step in recovery should also give you a feeling of relief: you’re going to be in charge of your money, not the other way around.