1 Down, 3 to Go!

I made the final payment on one of my credit cards today!!! That leaves three cards left to payoff. I'm using a snowball effect to pay off my debt. It takes some organization but isn't too painful.  1) I ranked all of my credit cards by interest rate, highest to lowest.  2) Continued to pay the minimum balance on each. 3) I put any extra money towards the card on the top of the list. 4) after paying off the highest interest card, I focus on the next highest interest card. The snowball effect is that any money that was going towards to the first card now goes to the second card in addition to the minimum payment for the second I was already paying. This way I still pay the same amount each more towards my credit card debt, it's just allocated differently.

Here is an overly simple example. Suppose I paid $1 on each of my four cards for a total of $4 per month. After paying off Card #1, I would pay $2 on one of the cards and $1 on the other two. I'm still paying $4 each month. After I paid off the second card, I'd pay $3 on the third card and $1 on the last one. And so on. (I told you it was a simple example).