Step 5. Now use the Hot Flash Financial Plan for paying down your first target card. Decide your Extra Hot Flash Amount.
To pay down your debt, you probably realize that you have to pay more than the minimum payment. So make a decision about the precise amount of money that you will deploy each month to add to your minimum payment. Review your spending “surprises,” and your decisions to reduce spending on, say bottled water and/or fancy coffee, or one beauty treatment a month to find that money. We will call it your Extra Hot Flash Amount.
Let’s be a bit clearer. Let’s say you decide that you can find $25 each week, or $100 each month to use as your Extra Hot Flash Amount. That amount is more than the $23 that the credit card company says is the minimum payment due. You decide to use $100 each and every month, as your Extra Hot Flash Amount, to pay down that total balance due.
Step 6. Each month you add your Extra Hot Flash Amount to your minimum balance due. We will call that your Hot Flash Monthly Payment. It is the Hot Flash Monthly Payment that you send to the credit card company each month until you pay off the whole balance.
Let’s be a bit clearer again. Let’s say that your minimum payment due is $23. So you add your $100 Extra Hot Flash Amount to your minimum and you will be able to blast that debt down by having a larger Hot Flash Monthly Payment of $123 (or $23+ $100= $123). (It is larger than your minimum of $23.)
So your Hot Flash Monthly Payment = Your Minimum Balance + Your Extra Hot Flash Amount
Step 7. Every month you hit that target card balance hard. Pay that larger amount that we call your Hot Flash Monthly Payment so you can dominate that credit card payment– ruin it, kill it.
- If you get a Bonus, consider sending that money, as an even Extra Hot Flash Amount, so you punch down that ugly, stress creating balance of debt even faster.
- If you get a gift of money for a birthday or holiday, consider using that as an Extra Hot Flash Amount to pay down and dominate that credit card debt.
- If you feel like taking a second job, or you start to sell off your old “stuff” (and get more organized at home), add that money as to your Hot Flash Monthly Payment.
- Brag to friends
- Brag to your partner (husband or other person).
- Or throw a little party for yourself
- Vow to do it again–Target a second card.