Debt is a big problem in America. If you have a lot of debt, all you want to do is get debt free, right? You can get debt free with the right plan and I'm going to help you come up with that plan.

Organize your Debt

You need to start by getting yourself organized. If you don't, you could cost yourself a lot of money or think you've paid everything off when you haven't. Figure out how much you owe and place your credit cards, loans, and other loans in order of greatest interest rate, from the highest rate to the lowest. Doing this will help ensure you spend the least in interest possible.

Get your debts organized and get yourself organized. If you are disheveled, you are only going to make things more chaotic for yourself. You will also need to be organized in order to get your finances together which you will need to do with a later step.

Give yourself a deadline to get debt free. Do you want to be debt free in 1 year, 4, months, 3 years, etc.? It's going to depend on how much debt you have to get rid of and how much money you can put towards paying it off. Of course, the more you put towards it, the faster it will get paid, and the less money you'll waste on interest.

Build a Budget

You need to build a budget in order to reach your goal and get debt free. It is imperative. Start preparing for your budget by calculating your income and expenses. You want your income to be more than your expenses so that you can use that extra money to pay off your debt.

When you calculate your expenses, make sure you include everything. This must be everything you spend in 1 month. Include mortgage or rent, food, water, electricity, minimum credit card payments, snacks, entertainment, etc.

Notice I mentioned to include your minimum credit card payments, also include minimum loan payments. You need to do this in order to prevent further damage to your credit and to keep things under control. The extra money you are able to save is going to be put towards your debts to get them paid off and not just the minimums.

Subtract your monthly expenses from the total amount of income you have coming in each month. If this is a positive number, you have extra funds even put towards paying off your debt. If this is a negative number, you're going further into debt. If you break even, you need to save more towards debt. Even if you have a positive number, you can probably save more towards debt.

Build categories for each type of expense. For example, have a category for rent or mortgage, entertainment, food, bills such as cell phone, water and electricity, Internet access, cable, etc. You want to have as much extra funds going towards your debts as possible.

Fulfill your plan

The next and most important objective for you to fulfill is to actually complete this plan and keep it up. You can't just budget for a month and expect to pay off your debt. You also can't just budget until you pay off your debt and then forget it later on. You need to continue a strict budget in order to maintain your finances once you get debt free.

Getting debt free is a great feeling. There is no reason why you can't continue to stay debt free once you've paid it all off. Make that your objective. Stay debt free for life!