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Step 1: Pay Off Your Credit Card Debt
The first step to taking control of your financial life is paying off your credit cards. To get started, Suze uses Pamela as an example.
1. Line up your credit cards from the highest interest rates to the lowest. In all, Pamela has 23 credit cards, and Suze places the card with the highest interest rates up top and those with the lowest rates at the bottom.
2. Pay the minimum on every single card to stay current. "Then you have got to find—I don't care if it's $10, $50, $100—you have got to find extra money somewhere to pay on the highest interest rate card. You're paying the minimum on every one. Plus on this one, you are going to pay an extra $50 or $100 a month. I don't even care if it's $10 a month."
3. When the card with the highest interest rate is paid off, put the old payment toward the next card in line. "When this card is paid off, you're gonna pay everything that you had been paying on these two cards to [the third] card," Suze says. Keep repeating this process until each credit card has been paid off.
Use Suze Orman's Debt Eliminator calculator to get started!
Once your cards are paid off, Suze says you'll be on your way to start saving once again. "Your number one goal is to get out of credit card debt before you [start saving]," she says.
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