Pay it in the right order

The cards are away. Now the balance comes down, and it comes down faster with an order than without one.

Dearest first. From the sheet, find the card with the highest interest rate. Not the biggest balance, the highest rate. That card gets every spare pound. Every other card gets its minimum and nothing more, until the dearest is at zero, and then the next dearest gets everything. Gathergood's balance matching from chapter 11 is what most people do instead, and it costs interest every month, and this is the correction.

A fixed amount, on payday, by direct debit. Decide what you can put toward the dearest card each month above its minimum, and set it up as a payment that leaves on payday, before anything else. An earlier book in this series does this for saving and calls it the transfer, and the reasoning is the same. Money that leaves first isn't there to be spent, and a payment you set is a payment that happens, where a payment you intend is one that happens in the months when there's something left, which is few.

Make it fixed, not what's left. The fixed amount is a number you chose, and it's the same every month, and it goes out whether the month was good or bad. That's what makes it control in chapter 16's sense. What's left is what you've been paying, and what's left has kept the balance level for a decade.

Minimums on the rest, automatically. Every other card's minimum by direct debit, so that nothing is missed while the dearest is being cleared. A missed payment goes on the file, and StepChange is plain about what that costs.

When the dearest is clear, move the fixed amount. Don't reduce it. The same fixed amount now goes to the next card, plus what was that card's minimum. Each card cleared makes the next one faster.

The transfer, if it helps, with the old card frozen. If a zero-per-cent transfer makes the arithmetic better, use it, on chapter 12's terms. Old card away the same day, fixed amount set to clear the new card before the offer ends, no spending on either. A debt adviser will check the sums with you for nothing, and I'm not recommending any product.

Work out the date. With the sheet and the fixed amount, you can calculate the month the last card reaches zero. Write it on the sheet. It's the first time the debt has had an end, and a debt with an end is a different thing to carry from a level.